BOOK SYNOPSIS
A tormented mother. An abandoned girl . A deadly game of survival.
What happened to Ellie?
Traumatised by events, Ellie's mother, Laura, can’t bear to stay in the Welsh seaside town where she lives with her partner, Gareth. She escapes to London, breaking all ties with him, and refusing to tell anyone her new address.
After two years of living alone and working in a mundane job, Laura buys an old campervan and joins a singles holiday. Here, she meets Miriana, a teenage girl who bears a chilling resemblance to Ellie. As Laura uncovers Miriana’s story, she’s shocked by the parallels to her own life.
But stories can be dangerous, and someone out there will stop at nothing to prevent the truth about Ellie from coming out…
This brilliant, dark, frighteningly believable story has a plot that covers a wide range of authentic and relatable issues, flips back and forth in time and is written from the duel perspectives of two emotionally damaged women.
Almost three years had passed since Laura's beloved sixteen year old daughter Ellie had mysteriously disappeared and Laura's life had descended into a daily nightmare of grief, recriminations and judgement. Laura and her husband Gareth had found opposing ways of coping with the situation. Gareth had reacted with anger and developed what Laura viewed as a stubborn determination to uncover what had happened to their daughter whilst Laura chose to compartmentalize all her feelings within a box inside her head, leave her life in Wales behind and relocate to London. She had cut all ties with her past and now lived a solitary life in which the only person she actually communicated with was her neighbour Callum. Then fate decides to throw a spanner into Laura's chosen lonely journey when it decrees that she will purchase a campervan and join a singles holiday in Wales. A decision that will result in Laura being forced to confront her painful memories from the past and cause her to cross paths with a young woman called Miriana. Someone who bares a striking resemblance to Ellie and will cause Laura to find herself caught up in the twisted mind games of manipulative puppet master and forced to confront the shocking and painful truth behind events from the past.
Laura was a complex character who although I really tried to empathise with, I also found her quite difficult to like at certain times throughout the story. I know that different people have their own unique and personal ways of coping and dealing with the unpredictable events that we each encounter on our voyages along life's bumpy road. And we have absolutely no way of knowing how we are going to react unless we actually find ourselves confronting any one of life's uncertainties. But,I struggled to understand why Laura didn't want to know the truth behind Ellie's disappearance and why she got so frustrated with Gareth's quest for answers and what she called his conspiracy theories. Laura had a number of irritating and frustrating character traits and as with the other members of the author's ensemble of authentic and realistic individuals, I had conflicting feelings about how reliable and trustworthy she actually was.
According to Miriana's narration, her life had been a all too frighteningly authentic and believable story of battles with immigration, misplaced trust, deception, abuse, homelessness, coercion and manipulation. But how much of her story was actually true? Why had she integrated herself into Laura's life? Who was the man that Miriana was trying to escape? How did she know so many details about Laura's past life? By helping Miriana was Laura inadvertently placing her own life in deadly danger?
The Girl In The Van is a enthralling, intricately plotted page turner that hooks the reader in from the first page, keeps you guessing and frantically turning the pages. The thrilling story has more twists and turns than a winding country road and a nail biting, edge of your seat conclusion that ramps the reader's anxiety levels right up to the max. I would love to watch a movie or tv adaptation of this captivating thriller. Worthy of far more than five stars and very very highly recommended.
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