Missing Abby

Emma and Abby have been best friends since childhood, creating their own fantasy games in which they have to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. When they transfer to secondary school, real life intervenes and Emma, unable to stand the bullying they are both subjected to, leaves the school and ends her friendship with Abby in favour of more conventional relationships in which she avoids the hated stigma of being different.

A chance encounter on a bus some years later just before Abby’s mysterious disappearence means that Emma is the last person to see her alive and provides the catalyst for change which she needs to have the confidence to live her life according to her own beliefs and in the knowledge that those who really want to be her friends will accept her for what she is.

This is a novel about isolation and friendship, but it is also a well-crafted thriller in which her friends try to solve the mystery of Abby’s disappearence. Its resolution is both tragic and humbling, with clear lessons to learn about the way society stereotypes and punishes those who seek to be different.