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WORK TITLE: Something in the Walls
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://daisypearce.com/
CITY: Sussex
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Cornwall, England.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
AWARDS:Free Reads Bursary, Literary Consultancy, 2015, for The Silence.
WRITINGS
Contributor to One Eye Grey.
Her short story, “The Brook Witch,” was adapted as a stage play, 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
Daisy Pearce is an English writer. She grew up reading horror novels, which inspired her to becoming an author of horror novels herself. She published her first horror short story as a teenager. Pearce wrote about the appeal of reading horror in an article in CrimeReads. She acknowledged: “We find comfort in ghost stories because the scare is safe and contained, held at a distance from the home you live in with its locked doors and fastened windows.” In an interview in New Writing South, Pearce talked about how she first got started as a writer. She recalled: “I’ve been writing since I was a child but really got into writing about fear and suspense after I read Cujo at about eight years old – it was kindling really, I’ve been trying to thread that same sense of creeping horror into all of my work since.”
In The Silence, Samantha still thinks about her daughter, Edie, who disappeared two decades earlier as a teenager. Samantha was so disappointed at how quickly the community moved on from her disappearing. Frances, however, is also curious about Edie’s disappearance after finding a photo of Edie with her husband. A contributor to Read. Watch. Drink Coffee remarked that although “it’s obvious that Stella is an incredibly fragile character, I don’t think this was explored well enough in the beginning. The themes explored are heavy – including addiction, grief, mental health issues, and abusive relationships – but it just doesn’t have the impact it needs. It doesn’t feel personal, and that’s my main struggle with the story as I couldn’t get past the predictability of it all.”
With The Missing, former child television star Stella Wiseman has hit rock bottom in her life in her thirties. Charismatic Marco gives her the opportunity to turn her life around. The wealthy man seems too good to be true and gives her pills to help with her sleeping habits. He then takes her to an isolated cabin, where she feels like nothing is getting better, despite his attention. Stella starts questioning who she should believe. A contributor to Stevie Turner ~ Author of Realistic Fiction said that the ending of the novel “could have been better, but overall, it was a good read and kept me turning the pages.”
In Something in the Walls, Mina Ellis continued to struggle with the death of her brother six years earlier. She attends a self-help group, where she meets journalist Sam Hunter. He hires her to do some background research on one of the stories he is working on. Freshly graduated with a psychology degree and no work experience, she eagerly takes to the assignment. It also gives her some space from her fiancé, Oscar. Her assignment is about Alice Webber, who believes a witch has possessed her. Mina believes Alice’s problems are psychological but is shocked to see what happens when Alice’s enemy shows up.
In a review in Bookreporter, Ray Palen concluded that Pearce “does an excellent job creating and building the terror to the point where readers will get the same endorphin rush that they would experience watching a truly frightening film. Something in the Walls is an instant classic, and Daisy Pearce is a new voice to watch in the horror genre.” Booklist contributor Ashley Rayner suggested that readers of this novel “will be left questioning which is more disturbing, the rot within or the evil of other people.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor acknowledged that “Pearce’s first-person narrative compellingly captures Mina’s mental fragility.” The same contributor called it “a taut tale that chillingly intertwines psychological and supernatural suspense.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2025, Ashley Rayner, review of Something in the Walls, p. 35.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2025, review of Something in the Walls.
ONLINE
Bookreporter.com, https://www.bookreporter.com/ (March 1, 2025), Ray Palen, review of Something in the Walls.
CrimeReads, https://crimereads.com/ (February 26, 2025), Daisy Pearce, “Daisy Pearce on Poltergeists, Misogyny, and Coming of Age in a Fractured World.”
New Writing South, https://newwritingsouth.com/ (September 20, 2025), author interview.
Read. Watch. Drink Coffee, https://readwatchdrinkcoffee.wordpress.com/ (February 15, 2020), review of The Silence.
Stevie Turner ~ Author of Realistic Fiction, https://steviet3.wordpress.com/ (July 14, 2020), review of The Missing.
Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.
Daisy began writing short stories as a teenager and had her first short story ‘The Black Prince’ published in One Eye Grey magazine. In 2015 ‘The Silence’ won a bursary with The Literary Consultancy and her short story, ‘The Brook Witch’, was performed on stage at the Small Story Cabaret in Lewes.
Daisy’s debut novels ‘The Silence’ and ‘The Missing’ were published by Thomas & Mercer in 2020. Her third novel ‘Something In The Walls’ was published in the US in 2025 and will soon be available in the UK. Daisy currently works in a library and hunts ghosts.
s we prepare to open up the TLC Free Read submission window on 5th October, we’re catching up with some of the writers who have been awarded a Free Read in the past.
Daisy PearceDaisy Pearce originally received a TLC Free Reads bursary through New Writing South back in 2016 for her manuscript, then titled Gaslights. Fast forward to 2020 and that manuscript is now her debut novel The Silence, published by Thomas & Mercer. Her second novel, The Missing was published in June 2020.
Find out more about Daisy Pearce’s writing journey below.
TLC Free Reads will open for submissions via New Writing South on 5th October 2020.
Your novel is now out and available! Can you tell readers what to expect?
Hello! Yes, The Silence is out and I’m still not quite over it. Very strange! The Silence is a contemporary thriller about a former child star who appears to be losing everything; her friends, her job and her mind. But when she starts sleepwalking she discovers that maybe she isn’t as mad as she thinks she is.
How long have you been writing, and what got you started?
I’ve been writing since I was a child but really got into writing about fear and suspense after I read Cujo at about eight years old – it was kindling really, I’ve been trying to thread that same sense of creeping horror into all of my work since.
Tell us more about what sparked the idea for your book – and what was your experience of the writing journey, from initial idea to complete manuscript?
I had an image in my head of a woman jumping from a cliff into the sea with her toes pointed downward, straight as an arrow. That was the spark, coupled with the idea of isolating someone slowly and completely from their old life.
It was a long, slow process. I wrote and rewrote and subbed and re-subbed more times than I could count. At times it was boring and deeply frustrating but the original idea became the bones of something much, much greater in the end.
What writing tips would you give to your past self, if you could go back in time?
Stop drinking. I became so much more productive when I quit. Don’t over-describe, not everything needs to be metaphoric, sometimes a door is just a door. Above all, keep going!
You were awarded a TLC Free Read through New Writing South, a programme which offers writers in-depth feedback on a work in progress. At what stage in your writing process did the Free Read happen, and how was it helpful to you?
I had been rejected by so many agents and I really needed a more objective look at my work. Where was I going wrong? I sent in the application on a rainy Autumn day from my local library but I was so despondent I really didn’t expect to hear back. It was transformative for me to have that Free Read – the reader asked questions about the rest of the narrative that I hadn’t considered, made me reconsider my character arc and gave me some ideas of where the story could progress that I hadn’t considered. I was also given advice to help me approach agents which was invaluable!
What was the most valuable piece of feedback you had from the TLC Free Read report?
Ha! I can quote it! ‘Try to write from the inside-out, so you are truly in touch with your character’s feelings rather than the outward display of them’. This saved me from over-writing as I have a tendency to often do.
Have your launch plans been affected by the global pandemic? Have you done any launch events online as a result – and if so, what was it like launching a new book in the digital world?
Weirdly, no. I’m naturally quite introverted so the idea of a launch party of any description filled me with dread. I was quite happy to just throw it out there and see how it did. I did one or two blogger interviews and gritted my teeth while reading through the worst of the reviews like some sort of mad sadist.
What are you working on now?
My second novel The Missing launched in June and having finished a third I’m now working on a fourth. It’s a compulsion I think, to write my way out of darkness and the world folding in on itself. I honestly can’t imagine doing anything else. Actually I can. I’d do a tour of haunted England from The Jamaica Inn to Glamis Castle, stopping at stone circles and Wookey Hole on the way.
Thank you!
Daisy Pearce On Poltergeists, Misogyny, and Coming of Age in a Fractured World
"[T]hey seem to come out of nowhere, into homes just like yours."
February 26, 2025 By Daisy Pearce
Via Minotaur
The summer of 1977 was distinctly cool and wet, particularly compared to the heatwave of the previous year. In August there were violent storms and heavy rainfall over much of the south east of England, leading to hot, clammy days under skies which sagged with rain. At the beginning of that month there was an abrupt and inexplicable fall of grass from the sky in Poole, Dorset. Toward the end, a fireball struck a house in Surrey, blowing up televisions in the process. Three days later, in a small semi-detached house in Enfield, North London, a chest of drawers would slide across the bedroom of eleven year old Janet Hodgson and begin a poltergeist haunting which still holds fascination over audiences today.
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Polter-geist is a German word meaning ‘noisy spirit’. It deviates from a traditional haunting in many ways, most notably by the rapping, knocking and banging which accompanies it. Mostly, poltergeist hauntings occur in suburbia; in claustrophobic terraced homes or cramped flats, on housing estates that dead end onto scrubby woodland and undergrowth. They are distinctly domestic, the ghosts of staircases and kitchens and old metal pipes. They’ve been recorded smashing glasses and throwing marbles, slamming doors until the walls shake. It’s an invasion of sorts, a brittle, hostile energy that bounces around like a trapped, angry wasp.
Unlike other hauntings, poltergeists create disturbances on a large, noisy scale, thriving on disorder and panic. In stately homes and castles the resident ghosts are more refined; gliding grey ladies, titled lords, drowned lovers. In contrast, the poltergeists of the 70s and 80s erupted in messy homes filled with the smog of cigarette smoke and dirty tea-cups, woodchip wallpaper. These homes that are so familiar and lived-in, that bear witness to arguments and spot-picking and dirty trainers kicked off on worn carpets. It’s what makes the poltergeist most terrifying, in fiction and historical record—they seem to come out of nowhere, into homes just like yours. A malevolent ball of dark energy, they just need someone unhappy to attach to.
It has been noted that a large number of recorded poltergeist hauntings are centralized around teenage girls or young women. In a way, the hauntings mirror the turbulence of adolescence, all that heat and turmoil and repressed sexuality conjured into destructive energy. Look at Stephen King’s Carrie, a teenage girl living with a repressed mother whose telekinesis ignites into a lethal force once she begins menstruating. In the case of Annemarie Schaberl, a 19-year-old secretary in the town of Rosenheim in southern Bavaria, the outbreaks of power surges, exploding light fittings and heavy furniture moving of its own accord could be traced to her distress over a broken engagement. Teenage girls are trying to shed their skin, to fit in, to stand out, to make more noise and less noise and to be polite but draw boundaries and not draw attention to themselves because no-one likes a show-off. Perhaps a poltergeist is simply the energy of these confused and angry young women manifested as psychokinesis, repressed feelings rising to the surface like phantom hands that grab and tug and hurl, striking blows against the immovable object of their transition to adulthood.
“Our irrational, darker selves,” wrote novelist Elizabeth Bowen, “demand familiars.”
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There is also the suggestion that a poltergeist event mirrors a turbulent or traumatic home environment. Back in Enfield, the ghost hunter Maurice Grosse who was sent to investigate the poltergeist hauntings, wrote of the Hodgson family: ‘Peggy Hodgson is a divorced mother of four children. Janet is reasonably bright, with a strong imagination. Her older sister Margaret is inclined to be over emotional. She cries a lot. Billy the youngest has a speech defect. The older brother Johnny was sent to a school for troubled children’.
It’s this chaotic home life that makes such fertile ground for the poltergeist, with its tricks and games. They like discord. Most recorded hauntings involve moving furniture and smashed crockery, usually in the presence of one or more of the family members. Sometimes the entity will develop a deep, gurgling voice that rants and swears and barks like a dog. You can still hear the recordings of ‘Bill’ speaking through Janet Hodgson, an eerie smoker’s cackle expelled from the mouth of an eleven year old girl. The Bell Witch, the infamous Tennessee poltergeist of 1817, targeted the youngest daughter, eleven year old Betsy Bell. It would pull her hair and slap her, often leaving welts on her face and body, telling her, ‘you know I can follow you anywhere’.
Our homes are—often, but not always—a safe space. I recently interviewed a woman who became agoraphobic in her thirties because: ‘home is the only place I don’t feel consumed with panic’. We raise children in our homes, putting safety handles on cupboard doors, covers over the plug sockets. We teach them not to touch hot surfaces or reach for heavy objects. We put parental controls on the televisions and computers and protect them, protect ourselves. So how frightening then to think that these walls could be breached by an entity so insidious it may already have been inside, waiting. Waiting. More frightening still to think that if—as is believed—the poltergeist is a manifestation of psychological trauma, then it is our children who are responsible for it, turning all that inner turmoil and violence on us. The call, as they say, is coming from inside the house.
We find comfort in ghost stories because the scare is safe and contained, held at a distance from the home you live in with its locked doors and fastened windows. Besides, ghosts and poltergeists are ambiguous, aren’t they? Sure, we’ve all heard stories, but there’s no scientific proof, not really. Most people have real things to be afraid of—illness and employment and civil unrest. Compared to a looming divorce or a dark shadow on a scan, a poltergeist is probably a welcome relief. Yet it is in exactly these times that we know belief in ghosts and spiritualism tends to spike. Perhaps it provides us with a sense of security, that there is something beyond our mortal power, however insubstantial the evidence. A 2024 RealClear Opinion Research poll showed us that 61.4 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. In the UK, this goes down to 42%, still an increase of previous years. We live in the long shadows of wars and pandemics, a frightening era that we are struggling to make sense of. It’s a time of frantic change and a constant flow of information, not all of it genuine. It’s into this environment that hauntings—particularly the kind which thrive on confusion and dread—take root.
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Pearce, Daisy SOMETHING IN THE WALLS Minotaur (Fiction None) $28.00 2, 25 ISBN: 9781250334381
A fledgling British psychologist tries to unravel a teen's mysterious affliction in a Cornwall community gripped by the occult.
Six years after the death of her brother, Eddie, Mina Ellis is still haunted by memories that have been mercifully ameliorated by her attendance at a bereavement support group. There she meets empathetic journalist Sam Hunter, who hires her to do background research on a story he's covering for theWestern Herald. Though she's professionally inexperienced, Mina has recently gotten her degree in psychology. Since she's also feeling secretly uncertain about her upcoming marriage to the brusque Oscar, the assignment, which sends her to the bucolic parish of Banathel, provides a welcome getaway. The subject is Alice Webber, a bedridden teenager who believes she's possessed by a witch. Parents Lisa and Paul are warmly supportive, but siblings Tamsin and Billy are frustrated and skeptical. The womblike aura of the household makes Mina homesick. Her arrival disturbs the parish, which has a long history of sorcery-related tragedy (thinkThe Wicker Man), and a clutch of citizens visits the Webbers to demand that she leave. Shortly after Mina becomes convinced that Alice's malady is psychological, the arrival of Alice's nemesis, Vicky Matherson, triggers a horrific incident that shocks everyone. Pearce's first-person narrative compellingly captures Mina's mental fragility, the swirling anxiety simmering beneath even her most mundane human interactions and intensified by the heatwave that's gripping Britain, marked by brown grass that's a metaphor for her dark psyche. Can Mina trust her own analyses?
A taut tale that chillingly intertwines psychological and supernatural suspense.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Pearce, Daisy: SOMETHING IN THE WALLS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828785101/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d32ed944. Accessed 24 Aug. 2025.
Something in the Walls. By Daisy Pearce. Feb. 2025. 304p. Minotaur, $28 (9781250334381); e-book (9781250334398).
Mina should be happy. She's starting a new career as a child psychologist. She's getting married. But she suffered an unimaginable loss as a child that haunts her to this day. At a grief-therapy group, she meets Sam, a journalist exploring mysterious occurrences in a small Cornish town. Is Alice, a local teenager, acting possessed in a bid for fame and attention? Are she and her family faking the weird voices and dripping walls? Or is there really something haunting Alice? Something in the Walls is more creepy than scary, with a decidedly folk-horror bent and a claustrophobic, small-town setting with lots of secrets. Pearce provides visceral descriptions of people and places and smells and sounds to create a world where no one can trust their senses. Readers will be left questioning which is more disturbing, the rot within or the evil of other people. Recommended for readers looking for an introduction to folk horror, or fans of Slewfoot (2021), by Brom, Smothermoss (2024), by Alisa Alering, and The Unmothers (2024), by Leslie J. Anderson.--Ashley Rayner
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
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Rayner, Ashley. "Something in the Walls." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 11-12, Feb. 2025, p. 35. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A846924696/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=22fb465b. Accessed 24 Aug. 2025.
Something in the Walls
by Daisy Pearce
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Daisy Pearce, who makes her home in the UK, is a relative newcomer on the horror circuit. But I can confidently say that her name will be remembered after the release of her latest novel, SOMETHING IN THE WALLS. This is classic supernatural horror dripping with terror from beginning to end.
In June 1989, we are introduced to Mina Ellis, who recently has earned her keep as a child psychologist. She has had difficulty getting a leg up in her career until she learns about a unique opportunity in the oddest of places. Mina has never gotten over the death of her brother, Eddie, when he was a child and needs to continue going to group grief counseling. Her fiancé Oscar, a rather dull, serious sort, does not seem to be able to give her the emotional support that the group offers her.
"SOMETHING IN THE WALLS is an instant classic, and Daisy Pearce is a new voice to watch in the horror genre."
Mina meets a new member, Sam Hunter, who is trying to deal with the sudden death of his wife. He approaches Mina after their meeting, indicating that he is a journalist who has a strange story to cover and could use her help. In the remote British village of Banathel resides a family with a teenager named Alice Webber, who may be undergoing a bit of supernatural activity. Many of their neighbors have written Alice off as a witch and gather outside her home each day. Some protest her wicked witchery, while others try to solicit her help.
Sam wants Mina to observe Alice over a short stay at their house and decide if there really is some paranormal activity going on, or if the Webbers are scammers. As Mina is introduced to the home, Alice’s family jokes that she should have brought along her bell, book and candle. While Mina is observing Alice and trying to build a relationship with her, she sees a young girl who at times seems normal and at other moments is extremely troubled. This makes her dive deeper, and throughout the narrative she becomes more of a believer that something else far more sinister is at play here.
As I was reading, I immediately thought about the British family haunting known as the Enfield Horror, which was the impetus for The Conjuring 2. I was amazed when Pearce referenced that very event during the story, which validated everything going on in this chilling tale. One of the highlights (and there are many) is the introduction of the next-door neighbors. All I will say is that whatever is going on in that house may be connected somehow to what Alice and her family are experiencing. Trust me, it is great.
The author does an excellent job creating and building the terror to the point where readers will get the same endorphin rush that they would experience watching a truly frightening film. SOMETHING IN THE WALLS is an instant classic, and Daisy Pearce is a new voice to watch in the horror genre.
Reviewed by Ray Palen on March 1, 2025
Book Review: The Silence by Daisy Pearce
“I wonder how it would feel to plummet that far; would there be a lightness, a liberation? Would the air rushing past your ears sound like voices in the dark?”
Set to be released next month, The Silence is Daisy Pearce‘s second book. It follows former children’s TV star Stella Wiseman who, alone in her thirties, stuck in a dead-end job and having lost both parents, has nothing glamorous about her life now. Just as she hits rock bottom, she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. But is he too good to be true? She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems? No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question the one person she thought was fighting for her survival is actually her biggest threat.
Rating:
This is my Amazon First Reads selection for February 2020. You can get a free book every month by joining Amazon Prime, which you can do with a free trial here.
The Silence is a well-written book and I will certainly read more from Pearce in the future, but it’s a plot that I’ve read before. There’s a current trend of authors relying on an unreliable female narrative to help develop their thrillers so, unfortunately, it all felt obvious from the start, for me.
The story reminds me a lot of The Wife Between Us, as you can easily make the assumptions that our female lead is being taken advantage of, with her fragmented memory only telling us half of the story. But it doesn’t leave much up to the imagination, as it’s obvious from the synopsis alone which character is behind everything going on.
There is a lot that still needs to be pieced together regarding exactly how the story is going to play out, but because you know that Stella is going to lose everything close to her before eventually regaining some control, I didn’t have a lot of patience with her narrative.
The problem is that she isn’t a very sympathetic character. Usually, you can understand why a character is made to behave the way they do, seeing the pressures around them build up which help you to understand why they so reluctantly give in to the abusive natures of others. But Stella comes across self-destructive and weak from the start, seemingly allowing herself to manipulated and pushed around which is what makes it so difficult to sympathise with her.
This is only made worse by the fragmented structure of the story which becomes quite irritating, constantly jumping ahead in time to reflect on Stella’s lack of memory. Because we don’t see the abuse at the start and only see her downing more and more pills as she hangs on to Marco’s every word, there’s too much that we’re missing out on for us to really engage with her. And him. Without getting to know Marco at all, either, it’s no wonder we don’t trust him from the start, so there’s not a lot of mystery left behind his motives to consider the possibility that it might be somebody else.
I guess this is the trouble with vulnerable characters, as you really need to get inside their heads to understand their actions. But whilst it’s obvious that Stella is an incredibly fragile character, I don’t think this was explored well enough in the beginning. The themes explored are heavy – including addiction, grief, mental health issues, and abusive relationships – but it just doesn’t have the impact it needs. It doesn’t feel personal, and that’s my main struggle with the story as I couldn’t get past the predictability of it all.
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Towards the end, Stella does reflect back on some of her memories, revisiting scenes that she had blanked out to reveal what was actually going on at the time, but it’s all too late. The gaslighting subplot does give the story a sense of originality and it is this aspect that keeps your interest piqued, but the parts of the story that I was more interested in weren’t explored well enough in the end.
With the author being a huge fan of Stephen King, The Silence combines its mystery thriller genre with something more supernatural. You can see King’s influences throughout, almost acting as the gloomy, moist figure that creeps around the cottage himself. But neither genres are explored to their full potential. I would have been more than happy for the strange ongoings to be an actual ghost, but it’s never explained how much was going on in Stella’s head and how much was actually happening.
Moving the setting from London to a coastal town in Cornwall, it’s obvious that Pearce is a good writer as she uses beautiful imagery throughout. Being born in Truro, as well, she has a great understanding of the surroundings she writes about. Although the town of Tyrlaze is fictional, she describes the fog-heavy cliffs of the town well, mustering the senses of an often grey but always salty-scented feel of a Cornish town brilliantly.
There are also many tense moments that take place in the cottage and cliff side as Pearce does do well to build up the tension, another credit to her writing, but it’s just because I’ve read many similar stories that the revelations didn’t work for me.
So, whilst The Silence undeniably has some promising elements, it was too similar to other thrillers that I have read for me to get into the concept fully. In the end, it just feels like another example of a book that if you’re new to the thriller genre, then this will make for a great first read, but for fans of the genre already, it doesn’t add anything new, just the potential of a great author to keep an eye on.
My Review of Daisy Pearce’s ‘The Missing’.
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Tuesday
Jul 2020
Posted by Stevie Turner in Reviews≈ 8 Comments
The weather isn’t too good today, but I managed to sit on the beach this morning and finish ‘The Missing‘ by Daisy Pearce. This is a suspense/thriller in a similar vein to Mark Edwards’ books, where strange things happen to ordinary people (both authors coincidentally have the same publisher).
My 4 Star Review:
Eighteen years after her daughter Edie vanished, Samantha Hudson is still searching for her. Samantha and Edie did not always get along and Edie was a bit of a wild child, but Samantha is desperate to discover what happened to her. She last saw 15 year old Edie 18 years before, when she caught her in an intimate embrace with her boyfriend William Thorn.
Fast forward to the present, and William in the meantime has met and married Frances. Their marriage is in trouble, and Frances is sure that William is having an affair after checking his computer and seeing photos of another woman. She also finds a picture of William taken years before with Edie, the missing girl, and becomes increasingly interested in helping Samantha find her daughter once she discovers William had been a past boyfriend of Edie’s.
This thriller has frequent flashbacks, a couple of red herrings, and a bit of a long-drawn out plot. The ending could have been better, but overall it was a good read and kept me turning the pages.