Frankie Howe left the village of Oldcliffe-on-Sea almost twenty years ago. That's when her best friend Sophie disappeared, with no trace ever found. But with the news of a body located that may be her, she reluctantly heads back at the request of Sophie's brother.
Oh, Frankie is a mercurial, unreliable (and unlikable) narrator. Are her memories accurate or has time blurred the sharp edges? Frankie often (and rapidly) changes her opinion on people and events in present day. We learn about her take on the past through her internal conversations with the long gone Sophie. "Because the truth is bound to come out, Soph, and with it the dark secret we kept back then; the one thing we could never tell anyone else. Ever." But Sophie also has a voice - through her journal entries from 1997 we see what happened from her point of view.
The supporting characters are also hard to gauge - they seem to have their own agendas and their view of the past is again different from Frankie's.
I did find I grew a bit tired of Frankie's back and forth after a bit as I found it somewhat repetitive - perhaps this could have been shortened up a bit. Douglas drops hints as the book progresses that had me guessing at what some of that dark past might be. I was partially right, but not completely. Douglas drops a nice little twist in at the end. Local Girl Missing is perfect reading for the beach bag. Read an excerpt here.
Story seems good though execution did not go down well.
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