Wednesday, 3 August 2016

Claire Douglas

Claire Douglas is a new author to me and I found her through Netgalley. I'll look out for more from her in the future.




Local Girl Missing

At the time of writing this blog post, the book is not available on Amazon.com

My review -

School best friends Sophie and Francesca (Frankie) managed to catch up again for the summer after they graduated, almost twenty years ago. Over that intense summer they each went through emotional turmoil. Just before they both left for jobs in London, Sophie fell to her death from the remains of their seedy hometown's derelict pier. Now Frankie, a successful businesswoman, is called back to Oldcliffe-on-Sea by Sophie's brother. Human remains have been washed up nearby and he wants Frankie to help him identify them. He has never believed his sister's death was an accident.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It's told in the present by Frankie and in the past through Sophie's diary. The two are well distinguished in style, Frankie being dramatic, filled with simile, tending towards paranoia while Sophie's diary is more youthfully breathless though often dark in content. What I particularly loved was the clever way the author gradually altered my perception of the world they'd both inhabited twenty years ago. An excellent and unusual story.


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance review copy of this book.

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