The story is about Stella Parfitt who is seventeen and her mum Terri, who live together in a street full of close neighbours. Everyone knows each other except for 'that family a few doors down'. The Henderson's are a mystery to the neighbourhood, no-one knows what they do but whatever it is they are 'up to no good'. Then news erupts, Jade Henderson, a toddler in the trouble makers' home goes missing. The events that follow reveal an alarming truth about Stella's Mum that the press want the world to hear... Surely it's not true?
This is an excellent book though I did find in some chapters there are flash backs to when Terri was a teenager, and I found these hard to understand. These flash backs went on for chapter after chapter, and there wasn't enough of a change from Stella's narration so it takes a while for the reader to understand if it is a current event being described or a memory. Anne Cassidy writes a lot about missing children and in one biography she describes and acknowledges this:
'I write about missing children because for me it is a metaphor for the loss of childhood, the loss of innocence. The teenagers in my books are all losing their innocence in one way or another.' she also writes about missing children in her other books: 'Looking for JJ' and 'Missing Judy' but is three books sufficient to cover the controversial topic of missing kids?
A good all round book - three stars!
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