I love to read Lisa Jewell's books as I know they're always a decent and compelling read. I have had this one on my kindle for a while and picked it up towards the end of September. It was very compelling and I would really recommend it.
The novel has two parts to it. In the first part, it is the spring of 2017. Kim, aged only about forty, is babysitting for her grandson, who is only a year old. Her daughter, Tallulah, is a teenaged mum but has taken to it brilliantly. She has gone back to college and made some friends there. She loves being a mum. Her baby's dad, Zac (maybe Zack, I can't remember, it's a few weeks since I read it), has been living with Kim, Tallulah, the baby and Kim's son too and has been doing well at fatherhood. Basically, Kim knows they're young but isn't worried. They go out on a date night and it late comes to light that Kim discovered an engagement ring and thinks that Zac was about to propose to Tallulah.
When she wakes up at 4.30am though, Tallulah and Zac aren't back. Kim thinks this is really out of character and throughout the next day she makes her rounds, trying to find them. Zac's parents are really unconcerned; they're pretty disengaged from their son's life and reckon he'll turn up sooner or later. Kim discovers that the kids were in the local pub the previous night and were seen with some people that Tallulah was at college with, including a girl called Scarlett. She lives in a mansion just through the woods from the village, so Kim heads there.
Scarlett and her mum are there and say that Tallulah and Zac were there, but aren't anymore. They rang for a taxi in the early hours and headed off. Kim reports the two missing but the trail goes cold. No one knows what happened to the two teenagers on that night. Kim is left bringing up her grandson.
In the other part of the book Sophie is just about to move to the village where Kim lives, nearly eighteen months after the teenagers went missing. There is a school in the village for like rich kids who have been kicked out of other schools. Scarlett used to be a pupil there before she had been to college with Tallulah. Sophie's boyfriend has just been made principal there, and the job comes with a house on the grounds. Sophie is a writer so can work from anywhere, so she moves with her boyfriend. The house is idyllic and she is keen to settle in and get some writing done. She writes crime novels; she's very popular in like Denmark but not so much in England.
Only a few days after moving in, Sophie discovers a sign just outside her back garden, just into the woods, saying 'dig here'. She does, and she discovers the engagement ring that Zac had. She doesn't know the story of what happened though, so she starts to do some investigation. Clearly someone around knows more than they're letting on...
I liked both the women and their stories, and how they intersected. I liked the culmination of the book although it did stretch believability a bit. In all I'm giving it four out of five and am glad I read it when I did!
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