Last Seen

The disappearance of a teenage boy sends shockwaves through a British beach town in the overstuffed latest from bestseller Clarke (The Surf House). The morning after Jacob Symonds’s 17th birthday party, his mother, Sarah, awakes in the family’s beach hut near Bristol to find him gone. The date of Jacob’s disappearance is exactly seven years after his childhood friend, Marley, drowned in the same area, stirring up speculation among the Symondses’ neighbors that Marley’s death and Jacob’s disappearance might be linked. Clarke alternates narration between Sarah and Isla, Marley’s mother, slowly teasing out the relationships between the boys’ families and the precise circumstances of Marley’s death. Eventually, the fragile tissue of the lies about his drowning, which have kept the women’s friendship alive and maintained peace in their town for nearly a decade, begins to dissolve, and the search for Jacob forces them to face long-buried truths. The novel’s first quarter lacks heat, and when the pace picks up, Clarke lays the implausible misunderstandings and wanton cruelty on too thick. It’s a bumpy ride. Agent: Gráinne Fox, UTA. (May)