Girl Last Seen

April 10, 2017
Laine Moreno, the traumatized narrator of Laurin’s emotionally powerful but plot-challenged debut thriller, is barely managing to sleepwalk through her solitary existence in Seattle a decade after being freed from three years of horror at the hands of a captor who was never caught. Then the highly publicized disappearance of 10-year-old girl Olivia Shaw gives her a jolt. Although the missing girl comes from privilege, a world away from Laine’s precarious childhood with a junkie single mom, their physical resemblance is startling enough to suggest to Laine that their cases might be connected. The same notion strikes Det. Sean Ortiz, one of the two cops who initially discovered Laine by the edge of a deserted road. All too swiftly, Laine’s efforts to help save Olivia start to threaten both her tenuous stability and her life itself. Laurin creates a compelling, vulnerable central character, but Det. Ortiz and several members of the supporting cast function largely as devices to propel a story arc ultimately more clever than convincing. Agent: Rachel Eckstrom, Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

April 15, 2017
A decade after escaping from a kidnapper who held her prisoner for three years, a young woman must face the reality that he's taken another little girl.Thirteen years ago, Ella Santos existed. Now that girl is gone, replaced by Lainey Moreno, an acerbic woman who subsists on cigarettes and whatever pills she can find, trying desperately to forget the years she spent locked in a basement with the man who raped her. Until she sees a missing poster for 10-year-old Olivia Shaw, privileged where Lainey was poor, loved where Lainey was neglected. Improbably, the detective on the case is Sean Ortiz, the traffic cop who found Lainey the day she got away, the only one who doesn't think Lainey is broken beyond repair. The refrain--and it becomes an almost literal one throughout the increasingly predictable narrative--that Lainey believes she is worthless but Sean sees her potential grows tiresome, as do the allegedly shocking but actually humdrum revelations about Lainey's past and her connections to Olivia. Laurin, in her debut, tries for psychological depth by sidestepping the victim role for her heroine--an admirable choice--but instead plonks her in the decidedly less interesting resigned-vigilante camp, where her sense of agency disappears as fast as the pills she swallows. It's not challenging to root for a character who's damaged, but it is hard to find common ground with someone who's constantly negating her own self-worth in place of an actual plot.

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