Karen Brown

Twenty years after she and her best friend played a prank on a girl who subsequently disappeared, now-married Sadie begins to relive that nightmarish summer after a boy from her old neighborhood returns to town and unsolved mysteries begin to unravel. Original.

A Novel

The Longings of Wayward Girls

Jessica Nottingham

I'm not going to deny that I'm still slightly baffled by The Longings of Wayward Girls. In all honesty, I wasn't expecting the story I ended up reading. Alternating between Sadie's childhood, and her adulthood 20 years later, the synopsis made me believe that I was going to be living the mystery of a missing girl. What I was presented with was the story of a lost woman, her neglectful (and terrible) mother, and the past that ties them together.
 
Sadie was a really tough character to like. Even now I'm not sure if I was even supposed to like her in the first place. From a young age her character is one who constantly needs the attention and admiration of others. Not happy to fade into the background, Sadie spends her childhood as the alpha of her group friends. With no regard to the feelings of others, and no remorse for her actions, Sadie ends up the same person as an adult.
 
My favorite part of this book was definitely the writing itself. It flowed onto the pages in beautiful, detailed sentences. Karen Brown shines in her ability to draw the reader into her world. Sadie lives in a quiet suburb, where everyone knows one another and everything is always the same. I could feel the quiet breeze, see the fields of flowers, and hear the rustling leaves. Despite anything else, the writing is really what kept me reading.
 
The mystery itself, and in fact the reason I chose to read this book initially, was very understated compared to everything else. I was a little disappointed by that fact. This story revolves around Sadie's relationship with her mother, with her friends, and ultimately we watch her as she struggles to deal with being unhappy in her mundane life. I was eventually given a solution to the girl's disappearance, but it just didn't feel like enough.
 
I know that this book will have an audience that will love it. As I said before, the writing is definitely beautiful. If I had known what it was going to focus on ahead of time, and not been expecting something else, I might have been more engaged. Not my favorite read, but give it a try if you're a fan of slow-moving, beautifully written stories.

The Longings of Wayward Girls A Novel

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