Missing Presumed Missing

2.5★s
Missing Presumed Missing is a novel for pre-teen readers by British author, Paul Harris. New to Longfields school, after another day of trying to avoid the bullies, twelve-year-old Michael Dobson takes a shortcut home through the Spinney Woods, but gets disoriented: the trees seem to be sweeping him towards a gap between two beeches; he is drawn to a pai of mesmerising eyes in a bush, but the spell is broken when school bully, Jonty Johnson grabs him.

Michael somehow manages to escape, leaving Jonty behind in the woods talking to an old woman. When Jonty is reported missing the next day, Michael assumes he’s still in the woods. As the class speculates on what might have happened, Michael finds himself teaming up with smart but irritating Melanie Smithson and thick but funny Ben Gillet. Eventually, he reveals what he knows and, against the express orders of his anxious mother, leads them in a search for Jonty.

He learns from his history teacher that the woods are a Neolithic burial site, and later finds out that the local tribe was massacred there. And that Jonty is not the first child to go missing.

From here the reader should fast-forward past the repetitive episodes of friends searching the woods and coming up empty, to the last quarter of the book where the action ramps up to a dramatic if rushed climax and a rather underwhelming resolution.

While billed as a book for Teens/YA, the plot and writing are really more suited to the pre-teen/middle grade age group. Of the mostly cardboard characters, Ben is the most entertaining, providing much-needed light relief. Quite unrealistic, given the circumstances, is Uncle Steven’s encouragement of his nephew’s investigation. The promising premise is poorly realised resulting in a disappointing read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Matador.

This is a hard one for me to write as I was really looking forward to it. However the writing style is more on the childish side and I would say this makes it more a middle grade read in my opinion than teens and young adult.
Also the book was very slow burning and for most of it it was ourely about children going missing and almost felt very samey, as the book comes towards the last parts the reader finds out the reasons and cause for the children disappearances and is taken along for the ride to try and stop it. However, by this point the damge was already kind of done and the faster pacing and answers didnt make the rest of the book better it just made the ending feel very rushed.

This book is a fantasy, or at least a story of superantural things, and yet it spends the first 3/4 of the book being about missing children, and kids trying to find the missing bully, even though they would be happy if he never got found.

In the final 1/4 of the book, we learn what is making the kids vanish, and we got on a journey to save them.

I would say, skip the first half, at least of the book, and then read the rest. Once it gets going, it was great, and I got into the story, but having to slog through the rest was painful and I almost didn't finish reading it.



<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

Michael is an anxious twelve-year-old. He is bullied at school and has a strained relationship with his parents. He worries about anything and everything.

Taking a short cut home one day through nearby Spinney Wood, he stumbles into a mysterious parallel world. Spinney Wood holds an abundance of dark and frightening secrets: most notably the inexplicable disappearance of many children over the years. Little does he know, this will be the start of a great adventure…

Jonty, the biggest bully in school is missing, and only Michael knows where he is. He doesn’t know what to do, and he can’t tell his parents. All he wants to do is disappear and hide away –like a mole!

With the help of his newfound friends, Melanie and Ben, Michael returns to Spinney Wood in the hope of rescuing Jonty and uncovering the truth. Will the three of them ever make it back home? Can Michael take control of his own future? And will Spinney Wood’s darkest secrets finally be revealed?

Hmmmm… this was a hard one to rate because there were good elements in the story; like the topics of anxiety and bullying, staying true to yourself, friendship and honesty. But for me there was a mismatch of genre vibes in the book. It felt like a coming of age story partnered with a fantasy/fairytale book but for some reason the two concepts didn’t gel well enough for me which is why I struggled to get into the book as much as I would have liked.

An interesting portrayal of a child with anxiety, through a fantasy scenario.

When a boy in his class goes missing, Michael, with the help of two friends, takes it upon himself to solve the mystery. In doing this, he must face his anxieties and becomes a much more confident person.

The fantasy element of this story really intrigued me - an interesting twist on a historic theme.