Most missing person stories tend to follow a consistent pattern. Usually someone goes missing and it’s up to the other characters to figure out what happened to them. It’s hard to imagine having to solve someone’s reappearance rather than their disappearance, but that’s exactly what happens in Holly Jackson’s The Reappearance of Rachel Price. The unpredictable story has a unique twist on classic mystery books.
Bel Price’s mother Rachel vanished when she was very young, and Bel lived her entire life in the shadow of the mystery. Bel was with Rachel when she disappeared, leaving her car and her daughter on the side of a road. Being so young, Bel had no memory of the incident. When Rachel suddenly reappeared as the Price family was participating in a documentary about her disappearance, Bel was hesitant to trust her. Her story didn’t entirely add up, and Bel was determined to figure out how and why Rachel miraculously reappeared after so many years.
The Reappearance of Rachel Price is undoubtedly a unique story. The book follows Bel as she uncovers what really happened to her mother. It’s impossible to know which characters to trust. The plot is unpredictable and it’s difficult to solve the mystery without finishing the book. Each of Bel’s family members have their own distinct personalities, and the way their relationships are portrayed is similar to a real family. Although the story builds up by the end of the book, it moves somewhat slow at the beginning. This made Rachel’s reappearance even more confusing until more was revealed later.
Bel is not a typical nice main character. She is guarded and even slightly mean at times. She and Rachel have an interesting mother and daughter relationship that is strange compared to other books. The story does start out slow in the beginning, but everything falls into place by the end of the book. There is quite a bit of foreshadowing in some of the smaller details of the story, which is entertaining to look back on once the mystery is solved. The Reappearance of Rachel Price is overall a new and fun story, and its opposite take on a normal disappearance definitely makes it stand out.
