Customer Reviews

The Missing Girl

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The five Herbert sisters live their lives totally unaware of what is going on around them. They are each living out their own personal dramas totally self absorbed, that is until "the man" decides to treat them as his own personal flock of birds and follows their every move with disturbing fascination.

Told in a back and forth style you slowly see the predator mind calculate his next move and his justifications and the young girls are totally unaware of what is going on around them until it's too late and the inevitable takes place.

This book starts very slow and doesn't build steam until the very end which unfortunately is too late. The five sisters ranging in age from 17 to 11 all seem to have the same voice and it's hard to keep them and their ages straight. Billed as a YA psychological thriller, I unfortunately wouldn't call it either. It doesn't go in depth enough and I was more bored than thrilled.

The nameless man watches the five Herbert sisters as they flock to school, chattering to each other. The man loves the chatter. He loves the sight of the innocent girls. They don't notice him, which he believes is a good thing. He wants to blend into the background and continue to obsess over them.

The Herbert family, never prosperous, has fallen on hard times. Poppy, the father, can't work due to an injury, and Mommy's job in a nursing home kitchen doesn't cover the expenses of a family of seven. The parents struggle with finances and depression. Seventeen-year-old Beauty Herbert (who hates the irony of her name because she knows she's plain) works after school at a flower shop. She contributes to the family but plans her escape from them the minute she turns 18. She is determined to shake off the dust of their small town and find opportunity elsewhere.

Still, Beauty worries about her sisters. Will she be able to actually leave them? There's quiet and responsible 16-year-old Mim, who should be fine without Beauty (although Beauty doesn't know Mim's enormous secret yet). Fourteen-year-old Faithful has changed her name to Stevie. Stevie is a temperamental, wild disaster who wears the family out with her loud dramatic outbursts. To Beauty, Stevie seems headed for calamity, especially after Beauty spies her making out with a boy.

Fancy is 12 years old physically, although she will always be younger mentally. The family dotes on her, and she loves her special education classes. Fancy talks into her new tape recorder, dictating a free-flowing ramble of thoughts and ideas whenever she wants to chatter but no one has time to listen to her.

We meet 11-year-old Autumn as she tries to convince her mother that she's way too sick to go to school. Autumn has problems with her classes and, at the school counselor's urging, tries to write down her most private thoughts in a journal.

Beauty, Autumn and Fancy relay their stories to readers, telling us about their teachers, hopes, dreams and problems. One sister struggles with fluctuating powerful crushes, and the difference between real and fantasy relationships. Author Norma Fox Mazer, using various points of view (first, second and third), gets the girls' voices pitch-perfect. The setup, as well as the telling title, is an ominous backdrop to the family story as we become acquainted with the characters. We know these girls, and we're terrified for them as we learn more about the man who is watching them (a man who is proud that he killed countless pets until he finally found the perfect, obedient ones to keep). He inches closer to the Herbert sisters --- and we forget to breathe as we turn each page.

Mazer handles the dark theme of THE MISSING GIRL expertly, weaving empowerment, family love and hope into a tale that is likely to haunt readers long after the book is read.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

The Herbert sisters are completely ignorant of the man watching them. They don't realize his growing and dangerous fascination. They are completely oblivious to the fact that their safety is in jeopardy.

It's only a matter of time now.

THE MISSING GIRL is a tremendous read. Thrilling, suspenseful, and riveting, Mazer easily pulls the reader into the intricately woven story, causing shock, horror, and yet compassion as well.

This is a bold story that will rise above and beyond your expectations as the author charms her way into the readers' hearts through her beautiful characters and terrifying plot.

This is one book that is impossible to put down.

Reviewed by: The Compulsive Reader

When this book arrived, I had just planned to thumb through it. I'd never heard of the author or much information about the book. I was a bit curious.

The book itself is small and chunky. I don't know what it is about that particular shape, but I find it extremely attractive. I found myself scanning the pages.

After reading the inside flap, I had to read a little more. Before I knew it, I was a quarter way through and hadn't even left my office chair! There was no stopping then. I tossed the rest of the day out the window and moved to a more comfortable spot. The inner dialogue was...amazing is the only word I can think of. Mazer goes from the sweet, innocent voice of a young girl, one who I can pick out of a classroom to a chilling voice of a pedophile. The pedophile's voice is so chilling, it will have you afraid to take your eyes off your own children, even for a second.

The book is listed for teens, but adults should read it. I found myself rereading spots in the book, amazed at this writer's gift.

THE MISSING GIRL is a taut thriller I read in one long sitting. Mazer's characters are completely individualized and beautifully-crafted, and, while the story is tense and terrifying, it is also about family, courage, and strength. Highly recommended.

Please save yourself the time and effort if you are thinking of reading this book. On a scale of 1-5, I give it a -10. Each of the chapters is written from a different sister. It's disjointed and goes nowhere. You never really get to know any of the characters in any great depth, so you really don't care what happens to them (obviously you want Autumn to be rescued, but that goes without saying). One of the sister's has down's syndrome (or something of the sort) and her chapters could have been deleted from the book altogether as they did not add anything relevant to the story...just plain annoying. I'm surprised Norma Fox Mazer wrote a book like this. Very disappointing.

SUMMARY--NOTE: ENDING IS GIVEN AWAY!

This is the story of five sisters: Beauty, Mim, Stevie, Fancy and Autumn. Each sister has their own stories that interweave as they tell in their own chapters. It's an extremely dysfunctional family. The father has been laid off of work and everyone seems miserable. There is a strange, twisted man who watches them everyday as they go to school. He secretly fantasizes about each one of them and he has his favorites. We know that he needs to "behave" for some reason, but we don't know why.

One day the family decides to send Stevie away to live with her aunt to help cut down on costs. The sisters are distraught over the news and each of them handles their sadness in different ways (mostly crying uncontrollably). Autumn decides to leave and take a long walk. However, she ends up getting lost and when she asks someone for directions back to her house, it happens to be the creepy guy who invites her into his house to locate a map.

He ends up keeping her prisoner in a little room at the top of the house. Meanwhile her family starts to get nervous that she has disappeared and reports her missing. Autumn thinks of ways to escape and after a week or so of captivity she rips the metal post off of her bed, uses the bed to climb up to a little tiny window at the top of the room and smashes the window open. She climbs out onto the roof and falls off injuring herself. As she struggles to walk home, she is picked up by a woman who recognizes her as the missing girl and turns her in.

Autumn returns to school where she is ridiculed and ostracized. She seeks help from a counselor. A man is seen jumping off a bridge nearby. Months later the body is discovered and it's in such a state of decomposition it's hard to make an identity. The read is left to believe that this is the creepy man. They all move on.

I thought this book was boring. It wasn't what I was really expecting. I felt like this book was going no where. I did not like the way it was written at all. It would go from Autum's point of view, to Beauty's point, the man's point, and so on. It got confusing trying to figure out who was talking. It was just very very boring.

THE MISSING GIRL
NORMA FOX MAZER
YA Contemporary
Harper Collins
ISBN# 978-0064473651
304 pages
$8.99
Paperback--Available now

Rating: 4 Enchantments

This is the story of the five Herbert sisters and the man who watches them in the shadows. Beauty is the oldest that can't wait to leave the small town. Mim is the sensitive one. Stevie is the rebellious one. Fancy is the one with special needs. Autumn is the youngest.

The man is very ordinary. He watches his chickadees, planning on which one he'll take. The girls are unaware of this and continue with their lives until their family security is shattered one fateful day when the man makes his decision with painful consequences.

I admit at times this book was hard to read considering I'm the mother of a small child. This is a very chilling and at times disturbing story of a man who watches and waits to kidnap a girl. I was disturbed at how much the author revealed about the man's plans and his thinking so much so that I found myself checking my surroundings more than once.

This novel is told from alternating points of view that at times confused me. I almost think it would have been better if the author had stayed with only one point of view. By having all five sister's voices throughout this novel I didn't feel a real connection with any of them. Also the parents were in the background. I wanted to know what they were feeling and to show how a tragedy rips apart a family.

At the end of the book is a study guide and other interesting information on how the author came up with the idea of THE MISSING GIRL. I think this book would be a great book club selection. Also it would be great for discussions afterwards.

Norma Fox Mazer died in 2009 and THE MISSING GIRL is her last novel. Her career as an author of teenage books spanned forty years. Her books won many awards, including the ALAN Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and the Christopher Award.

Kim Baccellia
ENCHANTING REVIEWS
April 2010