Jessica Chiarella’s The Lost Girls is a novel outside my comfort zone, but one I enjoyed much more than I expected. I’m not a fan of unreliable narrators. What’s more unreliable than a woman still stuck emotionally at the age of eight, who destroys her marriage by using alcohol, has irresponsible sex with all kinds of men, and uses coke in the employee bathroom?

When Marti Reese’s older sister Maggie disappeared, eight-year-old Marti was the only witness. The family and law enforcement looked for days for the pretty teen who got into a car and told her younger sister to run. It destroyed Marti’s family, and ruined her life. She’s been looking for her sister for twenty years. But, it’s the call to the police station about a Jane Doe, when Marti supplies DNA, that sends her spiraling out of control. Marti’s behavior destroys her marriage, but it leads to an award-winning podcast as Marti tells the world about her search for answers. What next after the award?

Ava Vreeland offers the what’s next. She messages Marti that she has a story that could connect to Maggie. She tells her that Ava’s brother, Colin, is in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Marti isn’t interested in Colin’s story. There has to be someone in the world that’s only interested in telling the stories of the lost girls, the girls who disappear. Then, Ava reveals that Colin’s supposed victim grew up just several blocks from the Reese family home.

Fans of true crime or true crime podcasts may find this book intriguing. I found Marti and her beliefs and ideas to be fascinating. She is still that young girl who admires her older sister, while hating her for disappearing, for changing the family and allowing Marti to grow up lonely and overlooked. She’s “Forever the second child, always the sister of a missing girl. Always suffering from my mother’s attention as well as her inattention.” She feels her suffering is a penance for being the one who survived. There’s “The part of me that thrills at balancing on a sharp edge between irresponsibility and true danger.”

While I can’t admire Marti, especially with her decisions at the climax of the book, I can admire Jessica Chiarella’s skill in creating characters who capture the reader’s attention, and telling a compelling story.

Jessica Chiarella’s website is http://www.jessica-chiarella.com/

The Lost Girls by Jessica Chiarella. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021. ISBN 9780593191095 (paperback), 336p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .PDF to review for a journal.