Customer Reviews

Island of Lost Girls: A Novel

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I loved Promise Not to Tell, so I 've been looking forward to this book ever since I heard it was coming out. At the same time, I was a little worried about a letdown, that it wouldn't live up to the first book. No worries! Island of Lost Girls does not disappoint! If anything, I liked it even more.

Like Promise Not to Tell, it takes place in Vermont, and is about a woman who has to revisit her past when she's involved in a crime in the present. This time, the woman is Rhonda, a recent college graduate still hung up on her childhood sweetheart, Peter (who's married and has an adorable daughter), and the crime is a very weird abduction that Rhonda is the only witness to. She gets involved in the investigation, and starts thinking back to mysteries of her own childhood, when she, Peter, his sister Lizzy, and a feisty girl named Tock were inseparable.

Once again, McMahon does an incredible job building suspense and keeping you guessing, while also creating believable, moving characters and relationships in an almost gothic atmosphere. She explores notions of bad choices, evil, and forgiveness in a heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful way. I can't wait for the next book!

I was not aware that this book had come out and when I saw it at Borders I immediately scooped it up. After being thoroughly entranced with Ms. McMahon's previous effort "Promise Not to Tell", I knew I would love this book as well. She has such a knack for fluid story telling, extremely well fleshed out characters and an uncanny ability of being able to draw you in from word one. Her subject matter is disturbing but that's life as we know it. This is a little slip of a book, only 255 pages but it is jam packed with suspense, atmosphere and plot twists that are sometimes slowly revealed and sometimes thrown right in your face. Had I the time I would have devoured this book in one sitting. I will again be waiting eagerly for the next Jennifer McMahon. Do not miss this author.

Rhonda Farr is 23 and on her way to a job interview. Rhonda is sitting in her car outside Pat's Mini Mart in Pike's Crossing, waiting to fill her car up with gas. Trudy Florucci pulls up and runs inside the Mini Mart, leaving the motor running and Ernie, her little girl in the car. A gold-colored VW pulls into Pat's Mini Mart, driven by a large white rabbit. Before Rhonda can get over her shock at seeing a rabbit driving the VW, Ernie has jumped out of her mother's car and rode off with the rabbit. Rhonda is guilt ridden because the child has disappeared, and she took no action whatsoever to try and stop the abduction.

Pat, the owner of Pat's Mini Mart, has set up a "Find Ernie Headquarters." Rhonda is one of the volunteers. The disappearance of Ernie has caused Rhonda to take a trip back to her childhood and memories of Peter, Lizzy and Tock, her childhood friends. The group built a stage and produced Peter Pan. Rhonda's family and the families of her friends gathered for social activities. Thinking of these times reminds Rhonda of many mysteries in the past. The disappearance of Peter's father, as well as that of his sister Lizzy, is a memory Rhonda dwells on.

Island of Lost Girls is a book full of suspense and heartbreak. It is also a peek into the wonderful imagination of children and their private little world. The ending is shocking, sad and happy, too. I would highly recommend this book.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

I heard great reviews for this book and was severely let down by the juvenile writing and story line. I felt like I may have enjoyed this book at a younger age, but this book was definitely too easy of a read for me. I felt the story line was immature and predictable, the ending was forced, and the characters were not developed. I would advise the writing of this book to be suitable for a young adult novel; however, the story line is violent and grim and would not advise anyone to pick this up. Definitely not worth the ten dollars on the Kindle.

On the surface, this book is about an abduction and the search for a missing girl. The sole witness to the kidnapping is Rhonda, and as she tries to help find the kidnapper (who was dressed in a bunny suit at the time), she recalls a summer of her childhood a few years before her best friend also went missing. This summer was a turning point in her childhood much more than she knew at the time.

Both stories, past and present, are tragic enough. But I think neither is really the point of the book. To me, the point of the book was how very little in Rhonda's life is as she thinks it is. She begins to learn this during that one summer, but the full import of what was going on around her doesn't become clear until the hunt for the child she saw kidnapped is almost over.

And it's not that Rhonda's purposely deceiving herself, either in the past or in the present. But there are definitely things going on around her that she's not aware, and secrets that are being kept from her. Told in the third-person, but entirely from Rhonda's perspective, McMahon reveals these secrets in a slow but satisfying way.

Rhonda Farr, 23 years old and on her way to a job interview in her Vermont hometown of Pike's Crossing, stops at Pat's Mini Mart ostensibly to fill her gas tank. In actuality, she is hoping to run into Peter, the childhood friend she has always loved. Peter works in Pat's garage, and seeing him there beats having to endure the frustrating experience of viewing him in the bosom of his happy family, including his wife, Tock, and his little girl, Suzy. At the gas pump, though, Pat's husband Jim informs Rhonda that Peter took the day off.

Trudy Florucci pulls up to the store, leaving her second-grade daughter, Ernie, in the car listening to music. Jim runs into the store to wait on Trudy. As her gas tank fills, Rhonda nervously anticipates her job interview. She's distracted when a gold Volkswagen Beetle pulls up; she knows the vehicle belongs to Peter's mother-in-law, who continually gloats over how happy Tock is with Peter. Rhonda sinks down into her seat, hoping to remain unnoticed. But then the VW driver door opens and a giant white rabbit steps out.

The rabbit hops, jerking its head, and almost appears to be looking at Rhonda with its big plastic eyes. It nods at Rhonda and hops over to Trudy's car, knocking on the window behind which Ernie sits. Ernie smiles at the big rabbit, rolling her window down to touch it. Then she unbuckles her seatbelt, takes the rabbit's paw in her own hand, and walks with it over to the gold VW where she gets into the passenger's seat. Rhonda just gapes as the Volkswagen drives off.

Soon, though, Rhonda is explaining to the police why she did nothing as someone in a rabbit suit abducted a little girl. It's hard to explain, even to herself. She would describe herself as a practical, active person who always knows what to do in any situation, but for some reason she had felt mesmerized by the white rabbit. Understandably, Trudy is beside herself. She can't imagine who would take her little girl, or why. She even accuses Rhonda of being involved in the kidnapping. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials search the area while the store's owner efficiently sets up a search center.

Rhonda can't help but remember another person in a white rabbit suit, back when she and Peter were younger. Lizzy, Peter's sister and Rhonda's best friend, was also there. Peter and Lizzy's father, Daniel, had been the one in the suit, helping the children collect Easter eggs. But that was before the kids put on the play "Peter Pan" and Daniel mysteriously vanished, followed years later by Lizzy. Although Lizzy then sent postcards home to tell her mother and brother that she had joined her father, questions about their abrupt disappearances and Lizzy's frequent odd behavior have niggled away at Rhonda for years. Now, as she discovers clues that she believes will lead her to Ernie's kidnapper, she also grapples with understanding those long-ago mysteries, even as she strikes up her first true romantic relationship with Warren, Pat's nephew and a fellow volunteer at the search center for Ernie.

A heartbreaking and haunting masterpiece, this book teases readers with an almost painfully slow unveiling of puzzle piece clues. The atmosphere is dark and sinister while the plot twists and turns and tantalizes. Author Jennifer McMahon's understated writing packs an emotion-laden wallop. I can count on one hand how many times any book has truly frightened me, but ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS caused my heart to race and my breath to catch. I was afraid to keep turning pages, yet couldn't resist reaching the conclusion where the puzzle pieces finally fit together, forming an unpredictable and satisfying ending.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

While on her way to a job interview in Pike Crossing, Vermont, Rhonda Farr stops at a gas station. While waiting for service, she sees a mother enter a convenience store while her daughter Ernestine talks to a white rabbit who came up to the car. Mesmerized Rhonda freezes while the rabbit takes the little girl with him into another vehicle and drives away. Rhonda snaps out of her paralysis and tells the cops what she witnessed.

Pat of Pat's Mini market where the abduction took place sets up in the store a center to coordinate people who want to find the girl. They get residents to look for her and hang up missing posters; volunteers man tip hotline phones. Rhonda tells her friend Peter what happened; he informs her that he was incommunicado when the rabbit did his deed. The evidence points to Peter as the kidnapper; no matter how hard she tries to reach him, Peter refuses to confide in Rhonda until she gives up on him and goes to the cops. That proves the catalyst for all hell to break loose with Rhonda's life in jeopardy.

As with PROMISE NOT TO TELL, Jennifer McMahon provides a strong suspense thriller with realistic characters whom readers will feel they know. Running parallel with the present investigation are flashbacks to the disappearance of the father of Rhonda's best friend Lizzie in 1993 after wearing a rabbit's costume and three yeas after that Lizzie. The present crime brings back the as filtered through Rhonda's memories. ISLAND OF LOST GIRL is a tense mystery that grips audience from the initial appearance of the rabbit and never lets go until the readers feels they entered the rabbit's hole.

Harriet Klausner

This is another winning novel from Jennifer McMahon, full of mystery, local Vermont color, and strong personalities. If you have read McMahon's first novel, Promise Not to Tell, you will recognize the plot of this book. The two stories have similar structures. A female protagonist, Rhonda, gets involved in a present day crime that has links to a similar crime that occurred during her childhood. The story goes back and forth from the present to the past, gradually revealing the secrets of the people in a small Vermont town.

There are a few supernatural notes here, but McMahon does not craft another ghost story. Most of the action is rooted in realism. The main character is usually realistic in her thinking. Nevertheless, when a dowser fails to find the lost child, Rhonda decides that the child must be in outer space. This fact is delivered in a completely deadpan manner that left me scratching my head. It didn't seem to fit in this story.

McMahon's second novel is not quite as good as the first. I did not get to know the characters as well, or care about them as deeply. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining read. I stayed up past midnight to finish it. Minor complaints aside, that is the measure of a good book.

A haunting, captivating story, mystery, that weaves back and forth between the past and present.

Missing children, complicated relationships tangled lives, the people we know or think we know, the secrets we keep.

All this is woven into a story about "loss".

Jennifer McMahon is a talented author. I was so taken by Island of Lost Girls that I'm not reading Promise Not To Tell, her debut novel!

Chilly read on a Summer day!

"The Island of Lost Girls" is several types of stories at once- a mystery, a family memoir, a suspense story; But at it's core lives a stark and disturbing treatise on the horror of a seemingly normal childhood.
The story reminded me, in a good way, of the novella by Barbara Vine, aka Ruth Rendel, entitled "Heartstones". I enjoyed reading this book, and like any good Barbara Vine book, I kept waiting for the shock that I knew was coming.
I expect as this author continues to grow, as a writer, the occasional heavy handedness and whiffs of sanctimonious preaching will become a thing of the past.
I get the magnitude and devastation of the subject matter- make it count more by being a better storyteller.