2.5 stars

Although this book had action from the start, it never really appealed. I found Lauren to be immature, selfish and reckless, and ignorant of the concern her actions caused others. The only characters I liked were Jam, Lauren's best friend, and Lauren's younger sister Madi. The plot was too far-fetched, the writing simplistic and the ending was predictable. So, even though "Girl, Missing" is quite popular amongst our Year 7s, it did nothing for me. ( )

So I've wanted to read this book for a long time now and when I saw it on Scribd I knew I had to add it to my library. Then last week when I was bored, I thought I would give it a go, and I'm really upset to say it just wasn't what I thought it would be. I know so many people love Sophie McKenzie and I'm sure her other books are good, but this wasn't the best one for me to start of with and I wish I'd picked something different because now I'll be cautious of reading anything by her from now on.

My main problem with this book would have to be that I just did not once believe the story. In the first few chapters Lauren finds out that she might have been snatched from her biological parents instead of properly adopted like she was led to believe. All this because she stumbled upon a website for missing children and when entering her birthday, became obsessed with the though of the kid on the screen being her, to the point where she convinces her mum to take one last family holiday to America so she can visit the adoption agency her parents got her from and see if she's right or not. Come on, does that really sound like it would bloody happen? I mean for starters it should have taken months to convince her mum but it didn't, she flew out within the month (or so) and everything she planned just seemed to fall in to place.

Now it wasn't just the lack of believable storyline that got to me, the characters did to. Not only was Lauren a unrelatable character, but she was selfish, very self centred and at times disrespectful to the people who had brought her up. All she cared about was finding her 'real parents' and yeah, her and her mum and dad my not have got a long over the past few years but that's called a family. It is in no way shape or form a reason to justify a crusade to find people to replace them with. She never thought about the consequence of her actions or what she would do if everything turned out to be true, she didn't think about her best friend who was on the trip with them and how his mother would be feeling when they disappeared in America. She just didn't care because she wanted to do what she wanted to do , and she didn't like what she found.

Everything about this book moved to fast and didn't flow. I felt like Sophie McKenzie had put way to much time in to creating a back story and not enough into the development of her characters. I hate giving a book a bad review, its really not something I enjoy, even more since I can remember seeing it in the book stores when I was a teenager, and passing it up for fantasy books but hoping one day I would actually get around to reading it. Like I said, sadly I was just disappointed.

I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to the next one. I know I'll read it at some point but I'm not rushing to. I will however try something else of Sophie's, because I don't think she should ignore an author because of one bad book. If anyone has read anything else by her that they can suggest to me I would be very grateful. ( )

Good, maybe not very mature, but whatever.

I tend to find Young Adult books by British authors to be pretty uninteresting and honestly quite boring.

While I like the story well enough, I found it all to be a little juvenile and not really worth a second look. ( )

I liked this when I first read it, but now? It pales in comparison to other books I've read. ( )

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When I picked up 'Girl, Missing' I wasn’t that excited about it but I very quickly came to realise that I definitely should have been very excited about this book! From the first few pages I was totally intrigued by what had happened and what was going to happen. Both the past and future was so unknown, I loved it. Everything happened so fast I didn't even have a second in which to stop and let what had happened sink in let a lone stop to do anything else, I couldn't put the book down!
Lauren is a character who I straight away warmed to and although she sometimes frustrated me with poor and rushed decisions I can see why mistakes were made as she was under a lot of pressure and in a very difficult situation. I liked how Sophie made it clear that Lauren knew that she had made mistakes, it made everything feel more real.
I really enjoyed how Sophie presented all the characters and that Lauren’s feeling towards each of the characters around her were clear throughout the book but not in a way where you couldn't still make up your own mind about them. I always find it really important that you can make up your own mind about the characters you are getting to know in the book.
I think this book definitely has a great mix of an engrossing story line, great characters and also written in a great way which leads to me becoming totally gripped` to the point where I had to force myself to actually put the book down, the pages just flew by! I couldn’t believe it when I kept realising how far through the book I was but also how much had happened.
The twists throughout this book were what kept me totally gripped, in the end I was totally expecting more twists and I was never disappointed. What I loved even more was how with the twists which I could sort of see coming there was another twist with that one, everything was so unpredictable. I LOVED IT!
Over all Girl,Missing is an addictive read which you will become totally absorbed in very quickly. Everything is very fasted paced and it's impossible to become bored while reading this! ( )