There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I didn't get on with this book at all. It's supposed to be a profound and searching study of trauma and survivor guilt, but I'm afraid I just found it extremely long-winded, turgid, unconvincing and, frankly, very dull.

The story is of Meredith an ordinary-ish girl who is, like many others, despised and mocked by the bitchy "Popular" clique in her school, led by the eponymous Lisa Bellow. When something finally actually happens, Meredith and the eponymous Lisa find themselves caught in a robbery. The armed robber takes Lisa with him but leaves Meredith behind, and the remainder of the book deals with the psychological effects on Meredith and her family.

Susan Perabo does this through long, minute detailing of the internal monologues and feelings of both Meredith and her mother. This can be a very effective device, but although Perabo writes very good prose, I found the whole thing quite staggeringly tedious. I didn't find either character very convincing and I thought there was little new or fresh in what was being said. The structure didn't help; suddenly leaving Meredith's experience for extended flashbacks into her mother's psychological past, for example, was just annoying, especially as I didn't really care about it, and other oh-so-artfully placed flashbacks to leave little cliffhangers were just as irritating.

I got more and more bored and frustrated and eventually I couldn't face any more. I should have been really interested in Meredith's internal state but, for example, when she went to the mall to buy shoes and the self-examination kept on and on and on, I found myself muttering, "How much *more* of this?" I very rarely do this when reading a book which I have been sent for review, but around half way through I simply couldn't face any more and gave up. As Meredith's mother would probably have said (many times), words cannot express the sense of relief I felt.

Holly Bourne's brilliant Am I Normal Yet?, the stunning My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent and others have, in different ways, taken me right inside a teenage girl's head and completely gripped me. This completely failed to do either for me. I have given this two stars rather than one because it is written in good prose, but although other readers have plainly enjoyed it, I really, really didn't.

(I received an ARC from NetGalley.)

This a really unusual book that took me in some unexpected directions. It tells the story of Meredith, a 13 year old who happens to witness the kidnapping of a school friend, Lisa Bellow and what happens when you're the girl who didn't get kidnapped. This strikes me as an original starting point for a novel and then what follows is so nuanced and understated that I was startled. Susan Perabo has crafted a really thought provoking narrative which is more about the perils of life as a woman in general than it is about the kidnapping. She deals with peer pressure, the horror of changing for gym class, the beauty of maths, the frightening realisation that there is a point when you have picked your child up for the last time, the irritation brought about by having a perfect husband and the simplicity of dentistry as a life choice. There are some wonderful relationships at work here - I particularly liked that of Meredith and her brother, Evan and while Claire, the mother, can be unlikable in places, that just makes her all the more human. I was really pleasantly surprised by this book. It wasn't the thriller about a kidnapping that I was expecting and I'm really glad.

This isn't a thriller but an internalised view of how a 13-year old girl and her family cope with unexpected trauma. Meredith suffers from survivor guilt after a girl is abducted following a robbery and she herself is left behind, and the book explores her strategies for survival including fantasies of control. The sight of her relentlessly upbeat father are excruciating, however much we sympathise with his intentions, and it is her mother who struggles more deeply as she veers between comfort and revenge.

While the book is relatively short, it feels longer than it is as not much happens and there is lots of filler in terms of backstories and memories, some useful in terms of character, others unnecessary. The fact that that family has already suffered from Evan's accident, feels a step too far - a double-hit of trauma within a very short time.

There's some lovely sharp writing at the start though it fades as the book progresses - almost as if the author has slightly lost her way. An interesting premise, but it might have been tautened up to make it more impactful.

I read this in one sitting because the writing was beautifully done and I appreciated the way Susan Perablo enveloped you into the plot as a reader - starting with a traumatic event and then showing us the aftermath through the eyes of one mother and her daughter.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is a wonderfully deep character exploration, a book that give you a real sense of feeling about the characters in it - Meredith had a quirky outlook from the start and seeing that change and alter after the event was utterly compelling. Claire, Mum, too now having to deal with a problem befalling her second child after her first had already suffered was cleverly drawn, occasionally unlikable but doing her best to stay standing.

It is a gentle story in a lot of ways despite the violent event that kicks it off - a kind of rolling picture reel of different senses and feelings - there is somewhat of a disconnect, in fact the character I related most to was Meredith's brother Evan - a quiet and steady background influence.

I think it may suffer from its description. This is not a thriller. It is not even really a mystery and there are no real resolutions as is realistic to most things in life. So don't go into it expecting those things. This is a strong, emotive family drama, an exploration of recovery and an insightful glance into a modern, middle class family whose lives have taken an unexpected turn.

Definitely recommended for fans of Literary character study.

**Review also on Goodreads