The Stranger Game by Cylin Busby (review)

Nico knows her sister is dead; she’s known it ever since Sarah disappeared her sophomore year, even as her parents hold out hope for her sister’s safe return. What her parents don’t know is that Sarah was awful to Nico before she disappeared; she constantly berated her chubby little sister while defying her parents to spend time with her older boyfriend. When a girl of the right age who looks like Sarah and bears the marks of the sort of abuse everyone suspected she might be enduring shows up four years later, Nico’s parents are elated. Nico herself remains guarded, but it’s not until she receives a vaguely threatening note that readers get an inkling of why it might be in Nico’s best interest to accept this new Sarah as her real sister. Chapters in Sarah’s voice add to the mystery by revealing a fiercely intelligent girl who has in fact been abused and groomed over a span of years; these lend a measure of plausibility to her ability to pull off a con, especially with a willing accomplice. Inspired by real events, the plot of the girl or boy who disappears and reappears changed has become something of a YA trope in recent years (e.g., Panitch’s Never Missing Never Found, BCCB 6/16; Clarke’s The Lost and the Found, BCCB 9/16), and while this variant doesn’t do anything startlingly different or innovative, readers who enjoy the mystery of how such a bait and switch might play out won’t be disappointed.