Seventeen-year-old Linsey Hart disappears the day before sheβs due to leave for college. As her neighbors piece together what they saw and what they think they know about the missing girl, their long-held secrets, prejudices, and entanglements become rudely evident.
Thereβs Linseyβs mother, Abigail, whose door-to-door searching makes her social outcast status painfully obvious; stay-at-home mom Reeva, whose primary concern is covering up the affair sheβs been having with the Starbucks barista; Mr. Leonard, a reclusive retired piano teacherβand the last person to see Linsey alive; George, an eleven year-old gifted loner who is determined to find out what happened to Linsey; and
Timmy, Linseyβs ex-boyfriend, who is left grieving as he embarks on his own college career.
My Review: 3.5 stars
Without hearing from Linseyβs point of view, the main character in this book, we instead hear from a fabulous cast of characters and their actions during the 5 days that Linsey βwas goneβ. This title leads you to believe this is more a mystery genre than what it actually is. This is a wonderful microscopic look into the lives of the family and neighbors who knew or saw Linsey in some capacity. Secrets are kept and sometimes unveiled during this tumultuous time. Itβs interesting to see what happens behind closed doors especially with the excellent descriptive writing from this author. I felt the wrap to the mystery was not realistic although that was what kept the pages turning. Great, quick summer read!
Quotes I liked:
She wasnβt in love with this boy, she told herself, she couldnβt be, but she wanted to eat his history, suck him up, be a girlfriend.β
– βUntil high school, I thought she was a snob, but she was just busy doing, while I was busy thinking. Wasteful. Mental masturbation.β
– β…his parents bought him a used Nikon camera heβd coveted from the camera shop in town. Its silvery body was an empty notebook awaiting possible poetry.β
– βHe wasnβt even listening. She could open her mouth and birds could spill out onto the table, mockingbirds, crows, raptors, and heβd just get up and leave his dish on the counter and go sit down in his permanently pleated work pants and beige cashmere sweater reading a travel magazine and sheβd never know what he was thinking-because he could never know what she was thinking.β
– β…it was as though he walked inside parentheses, keeping him from other words of the sentence, just a bit off from everyone else.β
– β -maybe there was something about this queen bee she could rely on. Or maybe she was just being lulled by the honey and the wing beats.β
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control β from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. I... read more
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