The Night She Disappeared by April Henry is more of a thriller than a horror novel, but I think the situation (budding serial killer, kidnapping of a teenage girl) is horrific enough to warrant its inclusion in this blog.
The Night She Disappeared begins interestingly enough, with Drew and Kayla working late one night at Pete’s Pizza. A call comes in requesting a pizza delivery; the caller asks for Gabie to deliver it. Gabie isn’t working that night, so Kayla takes the delivery. She doesn’t come back. The book then follows Drew and Gabie as they wonder what happened to Kayla (contrary to the back cover, they don’t really do a whole lot detecting – for the first 3/4 of the book not much really happens; Drew and Gabbie mostly just talk about whether or not they think Kayla’s dead) and Kayla herself, trapped in her kidnapper’s basement. The point of view changes with each chapter, and occasionally, we even get glimpses of the killer’s thoughts.
To be perfectly honest, I did not particularly like this book. The lead characters are boring and flat. We’re told things about them: “Gabie is smart;” “Kayla is fun;” “Drew is poor.” But none of them really act in a way that shows us any more of their personality. The worst developed is Gabie, which is unforgivable as the book sets her up as the main character. Gabie tends to just behave in whatever manner is helpful to the book at any given moment. She never really develops a believable personality; her behavior is erratic, her thoughts all over the place. There is supposed to be a romance blossoming between Drew and Gabie, but it never comes across as real. The two characters have zero chemistry; I still have no idea what they supposedly saw in each other.
I will take this time to also note that Disappeared, published in 2012, contains the line, “That’s just whack,” a sentence I don’t believe I’ve heard since 1995. I have no idea why Henry thought a teen in 2012 would use this sentence in a serious conversation.
The police also behave bizarrely. Even though Drew tells them that the caller requested Gabie, they don’t even bother to begin to look into the possibility of her being the intended target. They then focus on one suspect based on the sketchiest of circumstantial evidence (on the night she went missing, his truck was seen near where her car was found) , and when (SPOILER ALERT) he kills himself, despite the fact that they still haven’t found anything concrete to tie him to Kayla’s disappearance, everyone just assumes Case Closed and immediately holds a funeral for Kayla, assuming she is dead too. She’s only been missing for a little over a week at this point. You can’t actually declare someone legally dead this early on, even if it is, sadly, a long time for a kidnapping victim to survive. I doubt any family would be okay with letting go that quickly, and I know the cops wouldn’t be allowed to close a case with such little evidence.
And to top it all off there is an out-of-left-field paranormal element that eventually pops up as well, where Gabie is suddenly telepathically connected to Kayla, or something. There’s also a subplot which never pans out about Kayla leaving her high school boyfriend for an older guy. They never even properly set the new guy up as a red herring. This book is just a mess.
April Henry is apparently a New York Times Bestselling Author, and her work has been praised by other writers I admire, so I’ll likely give another one of her books (possibly the interesting looking The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die) a read at some point, but I was not impressed by this effort and am baffled why so many people seem to enjoy it.
YA Horror 