This is the second in the series of the Mandy And The Missing novels, and follows on shortly after the events of the first.
It continues Mandy Murray’s adventures down in Southampton, having gone down there to study after her upbringing in Scotland and her brief time in the Midlands helping her Mum get to grips with her father’s walking out on the family. However, this isn’t the only betrayal to hit Mandy, as she looks to come out of her shell again after the scares she suffered upon arriving at the college.
As a teenager, and one who’s had to do a lot of growing up in a short space of time, Mandy is both wary of people and keen to seen the best in them - she’s well aware that she is a crossroads in her life. She is also now aware that if she gives in to her more negative, introspective qualities she could yet end up as one of the Missing herself, just as Merrick did in “Ascent Of The Absent”, and her future would be destroyed perhaps as his was. She is quietly determined not to give in, and to allow the seemingly-unhinged Jennyfer to defeat her or harm her friends and housemates.
Unsurprisingly betrayal is the key theme to this instalment. Not only does Mandy carry baggage from her father’s actions (she had actually been closer to him when growing up than to her mother) but she constantly finds herself on the receiving end of others’ deceits. Blossom, Mick and even her student union colleague act in a way which leaves her shocked, but it isn’t just Mandy who suffers - a fellow student, Lindy, finds herself feeling stunned when the Scots girl breaks it to her that her housemates have tried to get her turfed out of her residence, even if Lindy hasn’t been totally honest in return. But eventually Moh - a musician whose self-doubt and introversion is as attractive to Mandy as his on-stage persona, and befriends her - is devastated when, before Mandy can help him he too becomes one of the Missing, and comes to believe the half-truths that the ever-scheming Jennyfer has told him. Now he is prepared to trick her in return, and even if poor Mandy can escape from the trap that has been laid for her there may be one more betrayal in store for her from the one man she has no choice but to trust...
Do any of us really know what the person we’re speaking to is thinking, or planning? That’s something which becomes clear to many characters in the novel - the duality of human nature, and of the dangerous effects this can have, particularly on friends. If you’d like to buy the book or read a sample please go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/700083
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