Book Review - Girl, Missing

Girl, Missing
Author: Sophie McKenzie
Series: Girl, Missing #1
Genres: Mystery, Thriller | Young Adult
Release Date: December 1st 2006
Publishers: Simon and Schuster
No. Pages: 283
Source: Borrowed
Rating:
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Lauren has always known she was adopted but when a little research turns up the possibility that she was snatched from an American family as a baby, suddenly Lauren's life seems like a sham. How can she find her biological parents? And are her adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her?

So I've wanted to read this book for a long time now and when I saw it on Scribd I knew I had to add it to my library. Then last week when I was bored, I thought I would give it a go, and I'm really upset to say it just wasn't what I thought it would be. I know so many people love Sophie McKenzie and I'm sure her other books are good, but this wasn't the best one for me to start of with and I wish I'd picked something different because now I'll be cautious of reading anything by her from now on.

My main problem with this book would have to be that I just did not once believe the story. In the first few chapters Lauren finds out that she might have been snatched from her biological parents instead of properly adopted like she was led to believe. All this because she stumbled upon a website for missing children and when entering her birthday, became obsessed with the though of the kid on the screen being her, to the point where she convinces her mum to take one last family holiday to America so she can visit the adoption agency her parents got her from and see if she's right or not. Come on, does that really sound like it would bloody happen? I mean for starters it should have taken months to convince her mum but it didn't, she flew out within the month (or so) and everything she planned just seemed to fall in to place.

Now it wasn't just the lack of believable storyline that got to me, the characters did to. Not only was Lauren a unrelatable character, but she was selfish, very self centred and at times disrespectful to the people who had brought her up. All she cared about was finding her 'real parents' and yeah, her and her mum and dad my not have got a long over the past few years but that's called a family. It is in no way shape or form a reason to justify a crusade to find people to replace them with. She never thought about the consequence of her actions or what she would do if everything turned out to be true, she didn't think about her best friend who was on the trip with them and how his mother would be feeling when they disappeared in America. She just didn't care because she wanted to do what she wanted to do , and she didn't like what she found.

Everything about this book moved to fast and didn't flow. I felt like Sophie McKenzie had put way to much time in to creating a back story and not enough into the development of her characters. I hate giving a book a bad review, its really not something I enjoy, even more since I can remember seeing it in the book stores when I was a teenager, and passing it up for fantasy books but hoping one day I would actually get around to reading it. Like I said, sadly I was just disappointed.

I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to the next one. I know I'll read it at some point but I'm not rushing to. I will however try something else of Sophie's, because I don't think she should ignore an author because of one bad book. If anyone has read anything else by her that they can suggest to me I would be very grateful.