This is a gripping thriller, inspired by the real-life case of a toddler who went missing in the early ‘90s. Touching on areas such as difficult relationships with parents, kidnapping and adoption, along with a compelling and high-speed plot, romance, wit and a great deal of suspense, readers of 11+ will find this utterly compulsive. It is also heart-breaking and will have you gripped to the page because the characters are so real.
What if everything you thought you knew about your life was a lie?
Lauren is adopted and eager to know more about her mysterious past. But when she discovers she may have been snatched from her family as a baby, her whole life suddenly feels like a sham. Why will no one answer her questions? How can she find her biological parents? And could her adoptive parents really have been responsible for kidnapping her? Running away from her family to seek out the truth, Lauren's journey takes her deeper and deeper into danger as she realises that someone wants to stop her uncovering what really happened when she was a baby... at any cost... A nail-biting YA thriller from the bestselling author of Close My Eyes 10 years on from it's first publication, Girl Missing has sold over 150,000 copies in the UK alone. This new edition of the bestseller includes exclusive extra content from Sophie and is a must for fans and readers that are yet to discover this modern classic.
10 YEARS OF AWARDS FOR Girl, Missing
Manchester Children's Book Awards Bolton Children's Book Award Soilhill Book Award Winner of the Sakura Medal Red House Children's Book Award Richard and Judy Best Kids' Book Lewisham Children's Book Award
'Please read this book: it is brilliant!; The Guardian
'Whenever I hear the phrase YA thriller I only ever think of one name - and that's Sophie Mckenzie. Why? Because noboody does it better' Phil Earle, award-winning author
'Sophie's thrillers are brilliant... you can't stop reading' Robert Muchamore, bestselling author
'Brilliantly described, scary and touching' The Daily Mirror
Author
About Sophie McKenzie
Having started out as a journalist and editor, Sophie McKenzie became a full-time author after being made redundant and taking up a creative writing course. She immediately fell in love with writing stories and her debut novel Girl, Missing – which has since sold over one million copies – was just the beginning of a multi-award-winning and internationally successful career.
Sophie McKenzie on developing the characters in Girl, Missing and Sister, Missing
Inspired by the case of a real-life missing child, I wrote Girl, Missing in the first two months of 2005. For the next five-and-a-half years I didn’t think there would ever be a sequel. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write about Lauren and Jam and Madison again. I did! It was simply that I couldn’t imagine another story that would sit well alongside the first book.
And then, one lazy afternoon in the Autumn of 2010, I sat down to watch the Coen Brothers’ movie, Fargo and, inspired by one aspect of the film, the germ of an idea slipped into my head. I made some notes and put them to one side. The next day I came back to the idea and fleshed it out a little. At last I saw how I could come back to the world of Girl, Missing and extend it into another story!
At the start of the first book, Lauren asks herself the question: Who am I? At this point she is very concerned with finding a practical answer to that question. Where does she come from? Who are her birth parents? Who took her away from them? Skip forward two years, to Sister, Missing and Lauren is trying to figure out what kind of person she is. Like many sixteen-year-olds she is pulling away from her parents. In Lauren’s case, she’s struggling to deal with two rather suffocating mothers (birth and adoptive) as well as the death of her birth father and the introduction of a new boyfriend for her birth mum.
I wanted this context for the book, because I think it’s one many people can relate to. Lots of daughters have to cope with controlling mums, absent dads and new step-father figures and this, I hope, gives Lauren’s extraordinary story a basis in a very ordinary life. However the most important relationships in Sister, Missing are between Lauren and her sisters. I don’t have a sister – though I’ve clocked up five stepsisters and three sisters-inlaw over the years – and I’m fascinated by this often complicated and intense family tie.
In Girl, Missing Lauren meets little Madison, whom she adores, and rude, unfriendly Shelby whom she loathes. One of the main reasons I wanted to revisit the world of Girl, Missing was to show how these relationships develop over time. Once Lauren was simply the child who went missing. Now, in Sister, Missing, she finds herself responsible for finding and saving her missing sister. How Lauren responds to this challenge is at the centre of the book, providing the story’s most dramatic moments, and revealing how getting to know her sisters will change Lauren in ways she could never have foreseen.
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