Molly Is Missing
Kim waits by the school gates, eager to welcome her daughter home from a week-long history trip. For a shy, anxious girl like Molly, time away was a major milestone, but cheerful, emoji-filled texts all week reassured Kim that she was thriving.
Then the bus doors hiss open. Molly’s seat is empty.
When Kim confronts the chaperones, their answer stops her cold: Molly never boarded the bus.
As the frantic search begins, the authorities move too slowly and the school retreats into defensive silence. Worse, Kim’s safe suburban world instantly fractures. Her best friend dodges her calls, and her husband slips away to whisper into a locked phone.
Realizing someone else was sending those reassuring messages, Kim is running out of time. Surrounded by lies and left with no one to trust, she’ll have to uncover her community's darkest secrets to find her daughter herself.
- Kim - Joel’s wife
- Joel - Kim’s husband
- Molly - Kim and Joel’s daughter, 16
- Toby - Kim and Joel’s son, 10
- Jade - Molly’s best friend, 16
- Harriet - Jade’s mother, Charlie’s wife
- Mr Charlie Bishop - Head teacher, friend of Kim and Joel
- Peggy - Kim’s mother
- Gavin - Peggy’s partner
- Bryan - Kim’s father
- Lottie - Molly and Jade’s classmate
- Ryan - Lottie’s boyfriend
- Tommy - Ryan’s older brother, Molly’s boyfriend 19
- Dan - Site manager at Whitevale High School
- Kath - Kim and Joel’s neighbor
- Shawn - Kim’s brother
- Mr. Trevor Lamport - Molly’s English teacher
- Molly is not at the school when Kim goes to pick her up after their trip to France.
- Charlie tells Kim that Molly didn’t go on the trip and that he received an e-mail from Kim saying that Molly was sick and would not be going.
- Police pull CCTV footage from the school and see Molly arrive at the main entrance.
- Molly: Molly arrived at the school and went in to use the restroom. She heard a male and female talking quietly in the next stall. When she left the restroom she saw Lottie leaving the stall and crying. Molly ran after Lottie and ran into Mr. Lamport, who told her to get in his car so they could look for Lottie. Mr. Lamport took Molly to his home, but she got scared and ran away. She fell and hit her head and woke up in a dark room.
- Kim discovers that before Molly went to the school, she went to the pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test.
- Lottie thinks Molly was trying to steal her boyfriend Ryan from her.
- Police find Molly’s journal, where she frequently wrote about someone named Trevor.
- Police track Molly’s phone to Charlie and Harriet’s home, where Jade has possession of it.
- Jade admits that while she was waiting for the bus at school, Molly texted and told her she wasn’t coming on the trip and asked Jade to take her phone to France and send messages to Kim pretending to be her.
- Jade says Molly left her phone near the school and Jade retrieved it before getting back on the bus.
- Molly has a miscarriage while in captivity.
- Kim sees Joel and Harriet kissing.
- Kim has Charlie look up school records and there is no student named Trevor, but that is Mr. Lamport’s middle name.
- Kim breaks into Mr. Lamport’s house and finds the receipt for Molly’s pregnancy test.
- Kim goes to speak with Ryan but realizes that it was actually Tommy, not Ryan, who Molly was dating.
- Lottie recently went to Harriet and said that that Charlie is going to leave Harriet to be with her.
- Lottie tells Harriet that it was Charlie in the toilet stall with her the morning of the France trip and that when he realized Molly was in the next stall, he ordered Lottie to leave the bathroom and stay quiet or he’d kill her and Molly.
- Lottie says Charlie has been harassing her and Molly.
- Harriet takes Kim and Joel to the old ice house on their property, where they find evidence that Molly had been there recently.
- Kim and Joel enter the tunnels below the icehouse and find Molly and Charlie.
- Joel attacks Charlie and leaves him for dead when part of the tunnel collapses, burying Charlie alive.
- Kim, Joel and Molly escape the tunnels.
- Mr. Lamport tells police he smashed in the bathroom door because he saw the pregnancy test and was concerned about Molly. He admits he overreacted and didn’t mean to scare her and has an alibi for after she went missing.
- When Mr. Lamport chased after Molly, he saw Charlie’s car coming, so he ran back into his house.
- Epilogue: Harriet was driving Charlie’s car when she happened to see Molly on the street after Molly ran away from Mr. Lamport’s house, and she kidnapped her because Lottie told her that Charlie was in a relationship with her.
- Harriet sent the fake e-mail from Kim and the texts to Jade, posing as Molly.
- A week later, Lottie admitted to Harriet that she had lied about Charlie being inappropriate with her and Molly. Harriet told Lottie to stick to her original story of Charlie being a pedophile, then called Charlie and told him that she had kidnapped Molly and that he needed to kill Molly or Lottie would go to the police about him.
- Charlie retrieved Molly from the ice house and planned to kill her to protect Harriet, but he died instead, and police believe that Charlie was the sole culprit.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for an advanced copy of this title.
A missing child thriller lives or dies by its momentum, and Samantha Hayes definitely keeps the urgency dialed high from the jump. The story alternates between Kim and Molly's perspectives, mostly staying grounded in the present timeline. While there are only about four flashback chapters throughout the book, they felt unnecessary - none of the details shared in the past were essential, and every bit of that information could have easily been revealed naturally in the present without pausing the forward drive of the story.
The pacing also gets bogged down by casting the net a bit too wide. The sheer volume of secondary characters and possible theories starts to clutter the central mystery rather than deepen it. Certain subplots felt more like filler than tension builders, particularly the sudden reappearance of Molly’s estranged father, Bryan.
As for the resolution, I definitely didn't see the ending coming, but it walked a fine line. The final reveal was almost too twisty for its own good, requiring you to suspend quite a bit of disbelief regarding how normal people would actually behave in that situation. Still, if you can roll with the slightly far-fetched logic of the climax, it wraps up the central mystery in an entertaining way.
If you like dual-perspective suspense, missing person mysteries, and twisty domestic drama, then you will enjoy this book.
#NetGalley #MollyIsMissing
- Charlie - Dead - Buried alive in the tunnels
- Joel - Alive - Still having an affair with Harriet
- Molly - Alive - Recovering from her ordeal
- Mr. Lamport - Alive - Cleared of suspicion of involvement in Molly’s kidnapping
- Harriet - Alive - Pleased to have gotten away with kidnapping Molly
- Infidelity
- Kidnapping
- Blackmail
- Miscarriage
- Death
- Alleged child grooming
ISBN: 9781807229450
Publication Date: October 26, 2026
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
