17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma (review)

“17-year-old girls vanish all the time.” Nobody knows that better than Lauren Woodman, seventeen herself when she feels a strange and forceful connection with Abby Sinclair, a girl who recently went missing. Abby, it seems, is trying to guide Lauren to solve her disappearance, haunting her with increasing frequency. It’s not just Abby, though: soon Lauren is followed by numerous lost seventeen-year-old girls, all of whom have stories to tell, all of whom see Lauren as their only confidante. As Lauren becomes more obsessed with the missing girls, she shuts out her boyfriend and her schoolwork, and her behavior becomes strange and disturbing. Is she genuinely in touch with the missing girls, or is this simply the compelling form her delusions are taking? This is ingeniously crafted: since the supernatural narrative is literarily plausible, readers will believe it along with Lauren until the evidence of her break with reality becomes incontrovertible. The result is a vivid plunge into a world where you don’t know that your version of reality can’t be trusted, an empathy-inducing walk in the shoes of somebody whose brain is betraying her. It’s also a book lamenting the painful vulnerability of young women at an age where they have just enough agency to head themselves into serious trouble, and the emotive prose will make readers grieve alongside Lauren for the lost even as they fear she’s among them. Suma adds an additional layer by allowing Lauren’s obsession with Abby to actually result in a solution to Abby’s case and leaving open the possibility that there was more than delusion involved in their connection. Fans of Jessica Warman’s works, especially Beautiful Lies (BCCB 9/12), will appreciate this intimate, compelling exploration of a troubled young woman’s life.