The Girl in the Photo by Sam Carrington
Published by Avon, 2023

Mercy visits the same supermarket every Friday, looking for her daughter who went missing there. One day she meets Erica who is dealing with her own issues. After looking at a photo of the missing child, and hearing no one is willing to help: not even the  police or the supermarket staff, Erica agrees to help with the search

As she gets more and more involved in Mercy’s life, speaking to the police and checking cctv footage of the day the child went missing, she discovers there’s no record of a missing child.

After the first few pages I was intrigued. What happened to the child? Is she alive? Where is she now? A clever plot, but one which ultimately proved disappointing because, after building the tension nicely, I found the denouement tidy but fundamentally too contrived

Warning: the story involves mental health issues and the details may be very upsetting to some readers