This is the first book by Jane Casey that I have ever read and I can honestly say that I did thoroughly enjoy it. Not only did I love the story in general, but I also found the idea behind it interesting and captivating. Casey’s novel reveals what happens to a family after a child goes missing and is never found; how such a tragedy eats every relationship in this family from the inside until they rot and decompose.

Life has not been kind to Sarah Finch. She is a young school teacher, who lives with her mother in her childhood home and carries an enormous amount of grief on her shoulders. She is a woman, who has had her fair share of loss and tragedy in her life. In 1992, when Sarah was only eight years old, her older brother – Charlie – disappeared without a trace. Being the last person who had seen Charlie alive, Sarah was the police’s biggest hope for anything that could help them find Charlie. Unfortunately, they didn’t believe her claim that she’d fallen asleep on the grass outside their house and did not see where Charlie went or who took him.

Fifteen years have passed since Charlie’s disappearance and Sarah Finch is trying to deal with the bad hand that has been dealt to her – she has a job, which doesn’t completely satisfy her and lives in a place, which she is not particularly fond of, but she sacrifices her happiness in order to take care of her mother, because she feels responsible to fulfil her duty of a daughter. While she is out jogging in the woods she stumbles across the dead body of Jenny Shepherd – a twelve-year-old girl, Sarah’s student. Jenny disappears a few days before Sarah discovers her body and the police investigation, which Sarah continues to be a part of one way or another, brings back old memories and opens old wounds.

As the story progresses we follow the search for Jenny’s killer through Sarah’s eyes as she tries to deal with her own personal issues – an alcoholic mother; a media attention that she neither welcomes, nor desires; a complicated relationship with one of the investigating officers – Andy Black; and even being the victim of a mugging. We also get to witness what Sarah’s childhood was like right after Charlie’s disappearance. The chapters, which present the first few hours, days and months after the family’s loss, told by young Sarah, gradually reveal the cracks that start to appear in a family when a tragedy like that strikes out of the blue. We are shown how the relationship between her parents falls apart slowly, but surely, which leads to her father’s death only a few years after the loss of her brother. After that Sarah is left alone with a mother, who is stuck in one place due to the lack of closure, and who turns into an empty, hollow shell over the years…

… until the investigation of Jenny Shepherd’s death finally gives them the answers that they have been longing for all those years. Even though the girl’s murder is not directly linked to Charlie’s disappearance, the two cases are connected by the one thing that they have in common – Sarah Finch. Even though Sarah faces more loss and pain throughout the course of the book, at the end she is finally granted the freedom that she deserves – to do whatever she wants with her own life, free from guilt, grief and family responsibilities.

I would have given the book five stars, because I believe that it deserves it, however there were some chapters throughout the book that felt prolonged, slightly uneventful and it felt like they were slowing down the development of the story. Personally, I felt that the story would have benefitted from a slightly faster pace, which would have made it even more appealing and breath-taking.

I am looking forward to reading other books by Jane Casey, because The Missing proved to me that she is more than capable of writing fascinating crime fiction with a hidden, unexpected twist at the end. After all, aren’t those the best?