Review: THE NOWHERE CHILD, Christian White

 Once again I am using my iPad to record this review so I am hoping that I will eventually be able to update this review so it looks more like my usual format.

I originally read this soon after its original publication in 2019. My earlier review can be located in this blog if you search for it. I have re-read it as part of the list of books we are tackling with my U3A Crime Fiction group. I must confess that I seem to have enjoyed it more this time around, certainly my rating is just a tad higher.

Originally I read it on my kindle as a pre-publication preview from Net Galley. This time I have read it as a hard copy from my local library. Perhaps in e-book format I read it too quickly to appreciate things that I enjoyed this time. 

This was Christian White’s debut title. The theme is an unusual one - an abducted child identified 30 years later by her older brother who has been searching for her almost all his life. The format is unusual in that there are two time frames, current time, and the time the two year old disappeared. And there are really two narrators - Kim/Sammy who was abducted, and then third party narration that tells the main story. 

True to form, I remembered clearly the first part of the book, and then I’d forgotten how the plot resolved. 

So what questions am I going to pose for my U3A readers?

• First of all, the standard ones: did they enjoy the story? What did they like most? What least?
• How plausible did they find the story? What questions did the author pose in his plot?
• What parts of the plot stood out for them? Which characters?
• Was everybody happy when Stu managed to eventually track his little sister down? Who wasn’t?
• Does it feel like an Australian novel? Why so? Or why not? In other words, if you didn’t know the author was an Australian what clues are there to his nationality?
• The author uses some really creepy settings. How effective were they?
• Was Dean wise in returning to the USA? 
• Did the ending take them by surprise? What strands of the plot had they worked out?

My rating: 4.6