October 23, 2023
Skillfully employing dual POVs, debut author Lally combines an amnesia plot with a missing girl mystery to deliver a suspenseful thrill ride. When a teenage girl is found in a ditch, bruised and unable to remember her name or the events that led to her predicament, Oregon police bring her to the station. A distraught man named Wayne soon arrives, claiming that the girl is his daughter Mary and brandishing as proof her birth certificate, Social Security card, and cell phone photos of the two of them. In Wayne’s custody, Mary acclimates to her new normal; still, she harbors doubts about Wayne’s truthfulness, especially as her memories start returning. Meanwhile, Andrew “Drew” Carter-Diaz is putting up missing girl posters, hoping to find his girlfriend, 17-year-old Lola Scott, who disappeared from Washington City five weeks earlier. Though most people assume that Drew killed her, Drew—aided by his cousin Max, and Max’s girlfriend and local sheriff’s daughter Autumn—seeks the truth. Drew and Mary’s evocatively rendered alternating perspectives persuasively build tension and slowly dispense information amid the twisting, shock-filled plot, all the way up to a gratifying resolution. Main characters read as white; one of Drew’s fathers is Guatemalan. Ages 14–up. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary.
