Wow! The Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver might be one of the best books I’ve read this year! It had me guessing until the big reveal, but the drama had me hooked from the start.
The book itself was arranged with an array of different chapters. Some were told from Nick’s perspective, some by her younger sister Dara, some were Dara’s journal entries, and others were news reports. Also, the timeline jumped between times before and after a car accident that the sisters got into. Sometimes the jumping around of the timeline was a little confusing, and I don’t totally know that it was necessary. At least, not as much as it was used anyways.
Dara is confident and troublesome, while Nick is mousey and very introverted. After the accident, Dara has a lot of scarring and trouble walking sometimes, while Nick’s memories of the accident are missing, probably from a concussion. Even though Nick is trying to reconnect with Dara, she wants nothing to do with her. Instead, Nick gets a job at a local amusement park where she slowly reconnects with her best friend Parker. That relationship is extremely complicated, because yes, Nick is great friends with him, but you can tell there are more feelings there. Also, Parker had been dating Dara on and off for the past year. Awkward!
Pretty soon Dara starts leaving cryptic messages for Nick in her journal since she knows she reads them. Nick thinks these happen to tie into the recent disappearance of a young girl. She thinks that the young girl’s older sister is tied up in something dangerous that Dara might be a part of, too. Once this part of the story starts gaining momentum, everything seemingly shifts to its head and the revelations that come of it are gut-wrenching.
With each page of this book I wanted to figure out what was going to happen next. At first, I wanted to see what was going to happen with Nick’s relationship with Parker, but then I also wanted the sisters to finally interact and get some good communication going. Then, by the time Nick gets swept up in the search of Dara’s past I really wanted to know what happened with that car accident. The outcome was very much worth the journey there! I also realized that this author is the one who wrote the book Before I Fall, which was adapted into a feature film a few years ago. That book is definitely next on my list, and Oliver is definitely an author I’ll be keeping my eye on in the future!