It’s Nina Landry’s birthday, and she’s supposed to have her kids ready to leave in a few hours for a Christmas holiday in Florida with her new boyfriend, but her fifteen-year-old daughter Charlie spent the night at a friend’s and hasn’t come home yet. Not by ten a.m., not by eleven. Nina is getting angry---they have a plane to catch, and Charlie hasn’t even bothered to pack. As time passes, though slower and slower by the minute, Nina becomes uneasy. Her anger gives way to worry, and that worry quickly builds into panic.
By one p.m., she’s wondering, has Charlie run away, or has something far worse happened? And why won’t anyone---not the cops, not Charlie’s friends, not Charlie’s father---take her disappearance seriously?
As day turns to night on their home of Sandling Island sixty miles from London, and a series of ominous secrets leads Nina from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island in time and more whether they’ll ever leave it again.
In Losing You , the newest thriller from the long-acclaimed master of psychological suspense, Nicci French unravels one mother’s life and replaces it with every mother’s worst nightmare.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A mother fights to keep her composure as she hunts for her missing child in this nuanced, literate thriller from the husband-wife writing team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (Killing Me Softly). Shortly before Christmas, Nina Landry, a divorced mother of two living on isolated Sandling Island somewhere in the south of England, is getting ready for a family vacation in Florida that will include her new marine biologist boyfriend. Blindsided by a surprise 40th birthday party, Nina is further disconcerted when her 15-year-old daughter, Charlie, who was supposed to help with the packing, fails to come home from a slumber party. Nina's seamless first-person account of the next 24 hours mines the frustration and feelings of helplessness that come with any investigation slowed by the rigmarole of police work. This engrossing read captures the importance of the often overlooked and underappreciated minutiae of everyday life while commanding a deeply personal reaction in readers. (Apr.)
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Review
Praise for Nicci French
“Nicci French . . . know[s] exactly how to maintain the tension . . . You live through every nail-biting minute.”
--The Guardian (UK) on Losing You
“They have mastered suspense . . . The heart pounds from the first page . . . This is a book that keeps you reading into the small hours.”
--The Observer (UK) on Losing You
“Nicci French has become synonymous with suspense.”
--New York Daily News on Catch Me When I Fall
“Nicci French is a specialist in the kind of evil that burrows from within.”
--The New York Times Book Review on Secret Smile
“Suspenseful from the start and ending with a brilliant twist.”
--People , “Page-turner of the Week,” on The Red Room
“Genuine chills and page-turning suspense.”
--Entertainment Weekly on Land of the Living