These two books are quick, easy reads. Crime thrillers for teens centred around the basic human concern of ‘who am I really’?
Girl Missing begins with 14 year old Lauren wondering about her birth family. She is bickering non-stop with her adoptive parents and brother and thinks that maybe she has another life someone where she belongs and feels special.
As Lauren looks into her adoption and starts asking questions she quickly realises that something does not add up. Could she be a missing child? Was she stolen from her birth family?
The action & drama escalates. We have run-aways, kidnapping, attempted murder and plenty of thrill and spills.
Sister Missing continues the story two years later.
This story felt more contrived and convenient. But McKenzie uses the same fast-paced, thrilling techniques so you don’t have too long to ponder the improbables.
The heart-breaking part was when I googled the images for the covers to insert here. My screen filled with photographs of smiling young girls – all missing – all with heart-felt pleas from their families to come home.
Recommended for good 11+ readers.
Lauren has always known she was adopted but when a little research turns up the possibility that she was snatched from an American family as a baby, suddenly Lauren’s life seems like a sham. How can she find her biological parents? And are her adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her? She manages to wangle a trip across the Atlantic where she runs away to try and find the truth. But the circumstances of her disappearance are murky and Lauren’s kidnappers are still at large and willing to do anything to keep her silent…
It’s two years after the events of Girl, Missing and life for sixteen-year-old Lauren is not getting any easier, as exam pressure and a recent family tragedy take their toll. Lauren’s birth mother takes Lauren and her two sisters on holiday in the hope that some time together will help, but a few days into the holiday one of the sisters disappears, under circumstances very similar to those in which Lauren was taken years before. Can Lauren save her sister, and stop the nightmare happening all over again?
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