Hide and Seek
A child vanishes during a game of hide and seek. Lily Murphy disappeared without a trace, leaving her parents trapped in an agonizing search and a community forever changed by her absence.
Years later, Joanna and Mark Stedman move into what seems like the perfect family home. But the shadow of a missing girl looms large. Lily Murphy used to live in these very rooms, and soon, Joanna can't shake the unsettling feeling that something sinister still lingers.
As Joanna meticulously unpicks the threads of the past, the seemingly idyllic neighborhood reveals its dark underbelly of long-held secrets. The deeper she digs, the closer she gets to the truth about Lily's disappearance. But this truth is intimately tied to Joanna's own buried past, and knowing it might be her undoing.
- Joanna - Mark’s wife
- Mark - Joanna’s husband
- Sophie - Joanna and Mark’s daughter, 3
- Emily - Joanna and Mark’s daughter, 11
- Ben - Joanna and Mark’s son, 9
- Fran - Mark and Joanna’s neighbor
- Lily - Mary and Robbie’s daughter
- Mary - Lily’s mother
- Robbie - Lily’s father
- Liz - Joanna’s friend
- Susie - Mark’s mother
- Tom - Mark’s father
- Cora - Liz’s neighbor
- Ines - Cora and Lila’s mother
- Victor - Cora’s father
- Zara - Fran’s best friend when Lily went missing
- Della - Fran’s mother
- Lila - Ines and Robbie’s daughter
- Cynthia - Rowanbrook babysitter in 1985
- Ruth - Robbie and Mary’s neighbor, Zara’s aunt
- Eddie - Zara’s father
- Saoirse - Zara and Mark’s daughter
- In the attic, Joanna finds a videotape of Lily’s third birthday party.
- Joanna thinks Lily looks a lot like her little sister Lila, who came to live with her and her mother when Lila was three.
- Joanna starts looking into Lily’s disappearance.
- Cora tells Joanna that the police never suspected Victor like everyone thought. Inez told everyone the police kept coming around to interview Victor, but it was really Cora they kept coming to speak to because she was the last person to see Lily alive.
- Joanna looks through photos from Mark’s childhood in Rowanbrook and recognizes Cynthia in one of them.
- Cora falls onto the train tracks and is killed when she is run over by a train.
- Mark thinks Joanna goes to therapy every week with someone named Dr. Kinsella, but she really goes to Kinsella House to visit her mother who everyone thinks is deceased.
- Cynthia is Joanna’s mother.
- Joanna wonders if Cynthia kidnapped Lily and if her little sister she knew as Lila was really Lily.
- In a coal bunker in her backyard, Joanna finds a tin with pictures of Lily’s that she believes were taken months after she went missing.
- There is a house in the background of the picture, and when Joanna shows it to Fran, she identifies the house as Ruth’s.
- Joanna visits Ruth, who tells her she witnessed Robbie abusing Mary but no one else knew.
- Things escalated when Robbie took his anger out on Lily one day.
- The day Lily went missing, Mary and Ruth found her asleep at the construction site.
- Ruth hatched a plan to kidnap Lily to keep her safe from Robbie, and Mary agreed.
- Lily stayed hidden at Ruth’s house, and Ruth would take pictures of her and put them in the coal bunker for Mary to find.
- After Robbie died of a heart attack, Mary took Lily and moved away.
- Ruth says Lily is still alive and happy, and she doesn’t know anything about her kidnapping.
- Joanna confronts Cynthia about Lila, and she tells Joanna that Lila was Inez and Robbie’s child.
- Inez had an affair with Robbie and got pregnant, but Victor was infertile, so she had the baby in Spain and left Lila with her mother.
- When Inez’s mother died, she paid Cynthia to take care of Lila.
- One day, Cynthia left ten-year-old Joanna in charge of Lila, and Lila died when Joanna accidentally gave her too much insulin.
- When Lila died, Inez and Cynthia buried her in Inez’s backyard, but Victor came home and saw them. Inez told him everything, then he got drunk and drove off a bridge.
- Cynthia tells Joanna that Cora showed up asking questions, thinking that Lila was Lily and that Cynthia had kidnapped her.
- Cynthia was worried Cora would go to the police so she followed her and shoved her in front of a train.
- Cynthia injects Joanna with an overdose of oxycontin, trying to kill her.
- Police show up to question Cynthia about Cora and Joanna gets taken to hospital.
- Joanna realizes that Liz is Lily and Ruth makes her promise to never tell Liz.
- Cynthia is charged with Cora’s murder.
- Mark is the one who got Zara pregnant, and Saoirse is his daughter.
- Robbie’s heart attack was caused by Ruth feeding him a foxglove-laced casserole.
Andrea Mara has a writing style that I usually love, but this book was mostly a letdown forme. The sheer volume of characters introduced early on makes the first section confusing. Trying to keep track of who is who is a challenge, especially since the narrative frequently jumps between the past and the present. It took a while to get a solid grip on the different timelines and the expanding cast of suspects.
Even after I got my bearings, the story suffered from pacing issues and dragged noticeably. A major twist around the halfway mark sucked me in, but the narrative still stayed slow throughout the majority of the novel, only finally picking up momentum in the last fifteen percent. Despite the sluggish pacing, Mara lays out several plausible scenarios regarding what actually happened to Lily, which kept the mystery grounded. The ending is a solid payoff that I did not see coming, delivering a few sharp shocks in the final pages.
If you like neighborhood mysteries, dual timelines, and mid-book twists, then you will enjoy this book.
- Cora - Dead - Shoved in front of a train by Cynthia
- Lila - Dead - Accidental insulin overdose
- Lily - Alive - Living as Liz, unaware of her real identity
- Cynthia - Alive - Facing murder charges for killing Cora
- Joanna - Alive - Happy to know the truth about Lily
- Robbie - Alive - Heart attack caused by foxglove given to him by Ruth
- Child abuse
- Domestic violence
- Drug use
- Murder
- Kidnapping
ISBN: 9780552177993
Publication Date: December 8, 2022
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
