Reading Last Seen is like being trapped in a maze that you can't find your way out of - there are so many twists and turns.
Told through the lives of best friends Isla and Sarah, Last Seen is a story of loss, love and betrayal set against the backdrop of an English seaside beach hut. Sarah's son, 17 year-old Jacob, has gone missing echoing the presumed drowning of Isla's son Marley 7 years ago. Marley's body has never been found though which means that Isla is stuck in the horrid no-man's land of not knowing his true fate.
I admit to being a little too entranced by the romantic idyll of the headland huts, that is until I remembered that there are no indoor bathroom facilities, but the picture perfect scene is only a mirage, because underneath the surface are ripples of secrets that threaten this ideal. The dual narrative means that the whole picture isn't fully revealed until the end, but also that the tension that underlies the relationship between Isla and Sarah is slowly unravelled before us. I'm not entirely sure that I really liked either of them to be fair, but I did certainly feel sympathy for both of them. It's difficult to imagine the torture Isla in particular faces every day, but Lucy Clarke paints a portrait of an anguished mother whose world has been destroyed by losing her son. The secrecy which shrouds Marley's disappearance puts into place the events which shatter the community and shows that no good ever comes from deceit.
It took me a while to get into the stride of this book, but once there I was proverbially hooked. It's the perfect book for a holiday, just to immerse yourself fully into the experience of reading about the sights, sounds and smells of an English summer.
