The Vanishing Season by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Vanishing Season is my entree into Jodi Lynn Anderson and I had no idea what to expect, other than it got great reviews. I thought it was more mystery, knowing that young girls were vanishing and being found weeks later, floating face down in a lake. But it was far from a mystery. It is a book about growing up, about relationships, about love.

Financial reversals force Maggie and her family move from their high-rise Chicago apartment to a ramshackle house in Gill Creek, Wisconsin that they inherited. Her next door neighbor is a beautiful girl her age, Pauline Boden and she and a boy their age, Liam Witte have been friends since they were young. While love is there, it’s not followed through because Pauline’s mother thinks Liam is beneath them, partly because his father is a little ‘odd’. Maggie, Pauline and Liam become an inseparable threesome.

Around the time of Maggie’s move, teenage girls start disappearing and winding up floating face down in the lake. After Liam and Pauline come home late for curfew one night and her mother, worried to death, has called the police, Pauline is banished to her aunt’s house in Milwaukee until the killer is found.

I’m pretty sure you can guess what happens…to some extent. Because the ending was a surprise to me…but then again, I’m not all that good about guessing endings.

I know the likeability (is that a word?) of characters shouldn’t influence whether or not you like a book, but it does with me and I really liked all the characters in the book, especially Pauline who is a free spirit. (I love free spirit maybe because I wish I was one.) I liked the way Anderson described the location, the characters, the entire setting. She added an element of suspense and also the supernatural, which added to the story, while not overpowering it.

The Vanishing Season is a good story. After having bagged the last three out of four books I’ve read, I was thrilled to read one that kept me going.