Missing Clarissa: A Novel

Here’s a positive: The audio production of Missing Clarissa is extremely well done. That’s the extent of my positives. 🤷🏻‍♀️ This “mystery” is light on the actual mystery and extremely heavy on teenage angst. I knew who killed Clarissa almost from the beginning. Even backwoods cops should have figured it out. Our two main characters, Cam and Blair, were not enjoyable to hang out with. Cam’s initially quirky personality quickly became annoying beyond tolerance. Everyone, including her best friend, routinely called her annoying. She was also impetuous, rude, and self-centered. Yet people liked her! I mean, why? She was like a five-year-old tyrant. The plot, such as it was, spent more time making a social statement than on creating an actual, you know, plot. 🙄 Our two white teenage stars consistently declared to each other and to us that white people abound. Every single description told us that over there are white boys and over here is a white girl and, hey, over there is a white woman. Good grief! We’re constantly treated to their mantra: “Everybody loves a dead girl.” Especially if she’s a dead white girl. And pretty. A dead, pretty, white girl. Get the hammer and hit me over the head because I’m not sure I got the message. Then we had a third teenager who declared herself a social justice warrior and prison abolitionist, at which point, our two teenage stars immediately followed suit. From there, we were treated to spontaneous, condescending lectures about racism, particularly as it pertains to the media, law, and prison. Not that I disagreed with these sentiments. In fact, I agreed with them. But the way it was done was grating and unnatural and obviously a ploy for the author to make a statement. No one reads to be preached at. Incorporate it into the plot, please. Make it go somewhere. But don’t simply toss all the hot topics in my face and say, “Here! Take that!” All that being said, this is a YA novel and I am far from a young adult. The story might hold appeal for teenagers, though given the (im)maturity of our main characters, I’d say an age range of 12-14. *My thanks to Macmillan Audio for the free download, and my apologies for this rant.*