The Reappearance of Rachel Price
by Holly Jackson
read by Sophie Amoss
Listening Library, 2024. 16 hours, 34 minutes.
Review written April 22, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
The Reappearance of Rachel Price is by the author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, so I knew to expect a thriller where you couldn’t count on police to do the right thing and there’s going to be scary danger by the end.
The book begins with Bel Price being interviewed for a documentary about her 16-years-missing mother, Rachel Price. In the context of the documentary, we learn that Rachel Price disappeared twice, first in a mall when she vanished from the cameras with Bel (who was then two years old), and second from a car off the side of a road, where baby Bel was found in the back seat, with the door closed and the heater running, but Rachel completely gone.
Bel’s father Charlie went on trial for Rachel’s murder, but he had an alibi and was acquitted. Now Bel relies on him as the only person who will never leave her.
But then, as they’re filming a reenactment of the event, Rachel Price returns. She says she’s been held in a basement all that time and the guy finally let her go.
But things aren’t as Bel dreamed they would be when her mother came back. And her mother doesn’t tell her story the same way each time. What if Rachel Price is lying? But why would she lie? And what actually happened to her? And why won’t she leave Bel alone so she can get back to her normal life?
To me, this book dragged a bit in the middle. I wasn’t completely tracking with Bel’s suspicions. I was also taken out of the story by the time they played a video of two-year-old Bel, because she was babbling like a not-quite-one-year-old, only able to say “Mama,” which isn’t consistent with a two-year-old at all.
However, as usual with a Holly Jackson book, by the time we started finding out what actually happened, it didn’t drag a bit. In fact, I turned on the audiobook as I was working on a jigsaw puzzle and when the audiobook finished, it was fully two hours later than I’d thought it was.
Holly Jackson doesn’t go for realism, but she does go for pulled from outrageous headlines, and she did surprise but satisfy me with the outcome of this twisty thriller.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/reappearance_of_rachel_price.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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