'Wake' is not so much a mystery novel as a story about two survivors of a trauma whose lives have been twisted out of shape in different ways by the unanswered questions surrounding the disappearance of a little girl from a sheep farm nineteen years earlier.

It's a slow-burn story where the plot twists aren't built to shock or surprise but to deepen the reader's engagement with the characters.

The sheepfarm and the small town near to it are more than a setting for the story, they are almost characters in their own right, both shaping and reflecting the experience of the main characters. To my Brit eyes, the huge scale of the sheepfarm and its taken-for-granted isolation were startling, The farm, once bustling but now destocked, ravaged by years of drought and now run by a skeleton crew who do little more than maintenance, was a physical manifestation of what had happened to the life of Mina, the twin sister who wasn't taken, after her sister's disappearance.

The story has the framework of a mystery, with Lane Holland, a Private Investigator, coming to Mina McCreary's farm to try and solve a notorious decades-old cold case. Except Mina doesn't want him there and he has an agenda that goes way beyond solving the case to get the substantial reward money.

Lane and Mina both start as enigmatic figures with pasts that have left them scarred and which still hold their present ransom. What those pasts were and if or how they were linked is what most of the story is about.

Although this is a story about a cold case, it doesn't feel like a solve-the-puzzle mystery of like a dramatised True Crime. It felt more like real life, where things are never neat and tidy, misunderstandings are common and things never quite turn out the way you thought they would.

There's a lot in the book about how parents influence children, the unreliability of memory, the parasitical nature of social media keyboard warriors who turn personal tragedies into public myths and the persistence of grief and guilt.

At the heart of it are two damaged people who need to find a way of looking forward and not backwards.

'Wake' is the start of a series of books featuring PI Lane Holland. I've pre-ordered the next book, 'Murder Town' (a.k.a 'Ripper') which is scheduled for release as an audiobook on 28th December 2023.

I recommend the audiobook version of 'Wake' narrated by Jacquie Brennan. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/hodderbooks/wake-by-shelley-burr-read-by-jacquie-brennan-... ( )

Lane Holland, private investigator, comes to Nannine to see if he can talk to Mina McCreery about the disappearance of her twin sister nineteen years before. He has done his homework and finds her fairly easily at the general store. But she doesn't, not surprisingly, doesn't want to talk to him. Lane also tries to talk to locals, but they are as reticent as Mina. So Lane uses plan B. He investigates another missing girl, the sister of a friend of Mina's, and her he eventually has some success.

The novel carefully takes readers over what happened nineteen years earlier, and then what has happened to Mina's family since.

On the surface Lane appears to be mainly interested in the million dollar reward that Mina's mother established in a trust fund over a decade earlier. But what he doesn't reveal is his ulterior motive, that he suspects that he already knows who was responsible for the 9 year old's disappearance.

A very atmospheric book. The Australian setting comes through strongly. Highly recommended. ( )

Loved the Aussie flavour, town, the showmen.. and the twist. Highly recommend. ( )

Takes place in Australia - a private investigator works on the case of a child who has been missing for many years. He gets involved with the surviving sister but has ulterior motives which remain murky until far into the story. It was kind of boring, one of the main characters (Mina) is ill-defined, and the resolution is accomplished very abruptly and in an unsatisfactory manner. Most of the characters are quite inaccessible and unlikable. ( )

A mediocre tale of two missing children (Evelyn and Christa), a private investigator with his own agenda looking into the cases and the impact it all has on the sisters (Mina and Allana, respectively) of both missing children. Parts were unbelievable and the ending was unsatisfying.

It was recommended if you liked Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor but Dirt Creek is so much better and much bleaker. ( )