The Longings of Wayward Girls

August 12, 2013
At the age of 13, Sadie Watkins has always been on the lookout for excitement. She and her best friend Betty fill this desire by causing mischief such as stealing their mothers' cigarettes or sending fake love letters to a neighborhood outcast, a girl who then goes missing. Flash-forward to twenty20 years later, Sadie is married and living a comfortable life as a mother to two young children and wife to an attorney, but her need for adventure still remainshas not left. When her childhood crush Ray Filley returns to town, Sadie is swept up into an affair that disrupts the lives of those around her. Details about her mother's death and the missing girl start to emerge and this is something Sadie is not quite ready to face. In her full-length -novel debut, Brown (Little Sinners and Other Stories) writes from the perspective of Sadie's past and present in alternating chapters. She seamlessly joins the events to create a story full of tension and suspense with an ending that is unexpected. Agent: Samantha Shea, Georges Borchardt, Inc.

June 15, 2013
Brown (Little Sinners, and Other Stories, 2012) expands her repertoire in her first novel, a psychological suspense that grabs readers from the start but loosens its grip a bit before the conclusion. Back in the '70s, a quiet middle-class neighborhood is rocked by the disappearance of two young girls who vanish five years apart. Sadie Watkins bears a close resemblance to the first, 9-year-old Laura Loomis, and is grudgingly forced to play with the second, Francie Bingham. Francie, with her awkward appearance, unhappy home life and a desire to be liked, makes an easy target for Sadie and her best friend, Betty. They resent Francie's intrusion into their games and conversations but soon turn her presence into a source of cruel amusement. More than 20 years later, Sadie's still living in the same neighborhood and has settled into her own life with a loving husband and two young children. Her past is long buried--or so she thinks--until musician Ray Filley returns to town. As Ray pursues her with single-minded persistence, Sadie's former actions and feelings haunt her, and she finds herself turning into someone she remembers all too well. Brown effectively ensnares the reader in a tangle of gloom, intrigue and drama where family homes and a peaceful, hidden neighborhood attraction might be mere facades for dark secrets and tortured lives that lie hidden somewhere within. Switching between past and present, Sadie's life slowly unravels as she's finally forced to confront past and present actions and determine who she really is and unresolved issues ultimately achieve some semblance of closure. Although the author combines the elements of good suspense writing to achieve an entertaining and nerve-jangling suspense novel, there are a few weaknesses that might bother the reader. The introduction of the pregnant waitress and her husband does little to enhance the suspense and, in fact, detracts from the story. And the ending is a bit too contrived and just doesn't fulfill the promise of Brown's earlier narrative. Even with flaws, Brown's complex and haunting piece is better than average.

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June 15, 2013

Opening with a map of the small Connecticut town setting and an old newspaper article about a missing girl, this debut novel by a short story writer (Little Sinners and Other Stories; Pins and Needles) immediately draws the reader into an absorbing story that straddles the line between mystery and coming-of-age tale. One summer, 13-year-old Sadie, who slowly loses her innocence as she uncovers the truth about her glamorous mother, plays a prank with her best friend on a neighborhood girl who later disappears. Two decades later, Sadie is married with children, creating the same life as the mother she disdained. Brown skillfully moves between the teenage Sadie, who uses her newfound knowledge and her scheming mind to turn child's play into something dangerous, and the adult Sadie trying to put her past behind her. VERDICT This haunting and hard-to-put-down novel will stay with readers long after they have finished. Especially disturbing is that Sadie, in both eras, is an unlikable person whose manipulations and need for instant gratification make her more like the mother she tries to forget.--Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S, MD

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2013
Nine-year-old Laura Loomis disappeared from the small town of Wintonbury, Connecticut, in 1974; she was last seen walking toward home. Chilling newspaper clippings about the missing girl frame Brown's debut, which centers on imaginative 12-year-old Sadie Watkins, a Laura Loomis look-alike from the same town who is navigating the shifting landscape between childhood and adolescence. In chapters that alternate between the summer of 1979 and the early 2000s, when Sadie is grown with children of her own, long-buried secrets from the past begin to surface in the present. In 1979, Sadie and her friend Betty play a prank on a neighborhood girl named Francie, writing letters to her from an invented farmboy, who invites her to run away with him. The harmless joke is anything but, and Francie, like Laura before her, disappears. Alongside the story of the missing girls is one about mothers and daughters, and Sadie realizes much later how her flawed mother has shaped her. Brown is meticulously detailed in her description of a small New England town where neighbors host communal cookouts, and the only threat to safety is the woods lurking just beyond. Using precise language, she explores the hazy edges of memory, the gnawing desire to escape circumstance, and the pervasiveness of one neighborhood's secrets. The result is a nerve-racking, psychologically complex novel sure to haunt readersespecially those with dark secrets of their own.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)