REVIEW: The Lost Girl by Mark Gillespie

The Lost Girl by Mark Gillespie

Genre: Psychological thriller

Read: 1st March 2024

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Published: 21st February 2024

★★★★ 4.5 stars

DESCRIPTION:

Darcy vanished thirteen years ago. Today, she’s coming home.

Darcy Drummond was four when she was kidnapped on a crowded beach. A massive police search and media frenzy followed but the girl was never found. Most people gave Darcy up for dead. Or worse.

Then, one fateful night, she walks into a police station. Seventeen years old. A chance to start over.

As the world celebrates Darcy’s return, Margo Martin, journalist and friend of the Drummond family, receives a strange phone call. A call which leads her step-by-step towards a horrifying revelation…

The real reason for Darcy’s disappearance is a long-kept secret. A secret so shocking, so unexpected that it will plunge the Drummond family into a nightmare they will struggle to survive. 

MY THOUGHTS:

Sometimes the truth is best left hidden...

Where to even begin? That was...INTENSE!! I actually finished this a day ago but I just had to let it sit and think about it because it was just...wow. So where do I begin?

Darcy Drummond disappeared from Bournemouth Beach when she was four years old and for years her parents, Sophie and Mike, have always lived in hope that she would return.

Now thirteen years later they are still trying to pick up the pieces, with Sophie self medicating with pills and Mike with drinking and gambling...and trying to forget the moment they took their eyes off their little girl for a few seconds and she disappeared never to be seen again. 

And then they get the phone call. It's the police. A seventeen year old girl has walked into a police station in Glasgow claiming to be Darcy. There have been imposters in the past making the same claim...but this is the first time the police have called them.

Of course there are doubts. Is it really her? Where has she been all these years? How quickly can they do a DNA test to confirm her identity? But all doubts dissipate as soon as Sophie sees her. She is the mirror image of herself at that age. This is Darcy. At last she's come home.

But what should be a happy reunion is tinged with a wariness and apprehension. There are unanswered questions about where she's been and what happened to her and how she escaped. What sort of life has she had? And what about the couple she had been living with who are now dead? But at whose hand? Their own? Or Darcy's?

Once the DNA test confirms her identity, the media awaits the story. But Sophie gives the exclusive to friend and aspiring journalist Margo Martin. Like everyone, Margo is salivating for the details but what Sophie gives her is the bare minimum resulting in a dull story. But it's what the Drummonds are not saying that pique Margo's interest. Something is not right in that house...and it's no surprise when she begins to dig a little she receives an anonymnous phone call urging her to look closer. What are the Drummonds trying to hide?

There is little else I can say without revealing spoilers but all I can say is that nothing is what it seems. This is not the usual missing child trope and what it does reveal is far reaching and shocking. It's no surprise that Darcy will have had a tough life after being kidnapped so the little girl the Drummonds hoped to have returned to them is long gone. But who is the girl in her place?

The story unfolds through the narratives of Sophie, Darcy and Margo and is divided into four parts. As each part develops, the turn the story takes ramps up and will have you flipping the pages faster than the speed of light. 

This is no light breezy story with a happy ending. This is gritty, intense and brutal. But wow! What a read! And what an ending! I'm still digesting it all...

I would like to thank #MarkGillespie and #InkubatorBooks for an ARC of #TheLostGirl in exchange for an honest review.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Mark Gillespie writes psychological thriller and suspense novels. He’s a former professional musician (bass player) from Glasgow, Scotland who spent ten years touring the UK and Ireland, playing sessions and having the time of his life. Don’t ask though. What happened on the road stays on the road.

He now lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife and a small menagerie of rescue creatures. If he’s not writing, he’s jamming with other musicians, running on the beach, watching mixed martial arts and boxing. Or devouring horror and thriller movies.

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