REPORTED MISSING

4 stars out of 5

Without a doubt, this debut novel is going to hit the right notes for a ton of readers. For me, however, it fell a little bit flat. 

For sure, it's a solid plot and the writing is very good; and overall, I enjoyed reading it and give it 4 stars without hesitation. For the most part, what colored my experience, I think, is that I've read too many of late with a similar theme: A spouse/lover/child suddenly goes missing (or is accused of a crime, or both), and the remaining spouse/lover/parent desperately tries to figure out what happened while refusing to believe what others insist is true. Whether the chapters reflect the perspective of a single person (as is the case here) or alternates points of view among several characters, each one adds "clues" that crescendo to an ending that's intended to knock readers' socks off.

All that happens here as well, to a woman named Rebecca Pendle. In the midst of a seemingly happy married life, her husband Chris Harding suddenly disappears without a trace from Shawmouth, the small English town to which they'd recently moved from the hustle and bustle of London. That same day, 14-year-old Kayleigh Jackson went missing as well, leading authorities to suspect the two disappearances might be connected. In short order, many of the townspeople turn against Rebecca - as do some of her former friends and neighbors, who now taunt and shun her because she was close to a person they believe to be a pedophile or worse.

Rebecca, of course, still loves Chris and doesn't believe for a second that he's played any role in the young girl's disappearance. To escape, she relocates to a rather seedy "caravan" park; but even here, she can't get away from the rumors and things that go bump in the night. And little by little, clues crop up that make her begin to doubt how much she really knew her husband - for instance, the fact that he never told her he'd been fired from his job two weeks before he disappeared.

Rebecca narrates her attempts to ferret out the truth, which often take her to places she knows she shouldn't go and to people she knows don't want to see or hear her. The clues she picks up here and there, though, only add to her self-doubt, angst and paranoia. And here is where I really got bogged down. Admittedly, I come from a sturdy stock of female role models, but never in a million years would I allow myself to be victimized by other people's words or actions. Certainly, I can understand the emotional toll of not knowing, say, whether a missing loved one is alive or dead and the need to get answers; but only up to a point. Rebecca reaches that level early on and then drags it to an all-new high. By the halfway mark, I had a single nerve left - a frazzled one at that - and she was standing square on the middle of it. From then on, I remained interested in learning who did what, but I really didn't care a whit how, or even if, Rebecca herself survived.

But that, folks, is just me. As I said at the beginning, this is a solid effort that I expect - and hope - will do well. Many thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review it.

Reported Missing by Sarah Wray (Bookouture, July 2017); 356 pp.