Nick and Dara have always been inseparable, but the love triangle with best friend Parker has caused problems. I liked the fact that Oliver gave us an insight into how their relationships were affected by this, without going on and on about it.
The narrative is split between the views of Nick and Dara. This gives us a rather slow, but well described, account of how each girl is feeling at key moments. We are told how the girls are feeling in the aftermath of a terrible accident that scars Dara.
When a young local girl, Madeline Snow, is reported missing, people are shocked. When Dara goes missing on her birthday Nick is convinced the two incidents are linked. At this point Nick starts to investigate what might have happened to Dara.
A little slow to start, this quickly became compelling reading. The force of Oliver’s prose made me desperate to see where this was going and exactly where this mystery would take us. Watching Nick and Dara flounder as they try to reconnect was heart-breaking.
Then the weird bit happened. I totally did not see it coming until just before it was revealed (the idea had occurred initially but it seemed to make no sense so I disregarded it). Suddenly everything got turned on its head and the last part of the book became an exercise in tying up loose ends. Up until the twist I was convinced this was going to be a book I’d be raving about and desperately pressing on anyone who might be interested. Right now I can’t work out if the end was pure genius or bonkers, but it threw me so much!