The Girl Who Was Taken by Charlie Donlea

Two abducted girls—one who returns, one who doesn’t.

The night they go missing, high school seniors Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are at a beach party in their small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. Police launch a massive search, but hope is almost lost—until Megan escapes from a bunker deep in the woods. . . . A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has made Megan a celebrity. It’s a triumphant story, except for one inconvenient Nicole is still missing.
 

Nicole’s older sister, Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole’s body will be found and her sister’s fate determined. Instead, the first clue comes from another body—that of a young man connected to Nicole’s past. Livia reaches out to Megan to learn more about that fateful night. Other girls have disappeared, and she’s increasingly sure the cases are connected.
 

Megan knows more than she revealed in her book. Flashes of memory are pointing to something more monstrous than she described. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you’ve been looking for...

After a string of disappointing and underwhelming mystery crime thriller reads picked off of Goodread’s best mystery lists, I picked up Charlie Donlea’s The Girl Who Was Taken on a blind Kindle app recommendation via Amazon’s Prime Reading hoping for something different. And different is what I got. The Girl Who Was Taken reads like a crime documentary reenactment that is colder, calculated, and more developed than many contemporary disappearance novels.

The story primarily focuses on two women who work together to solve who is kidnapping young teenage girls across various stateliness and why. Livia Cutty is a forensic pathology student finishing up her fellowship performing daily autopsies whose career choice was inspired by the disappearance and of her younger sister Nicole Cutty. Megan McDonald is an overnight sensation after she miraculously escapes after being held captive in a basement for two weeks and publishes a book summarizing her experience. The twist is that Megan was kidnapped on the same night Nicole went missing, however only Megan was found two weeks later while Nicole is mia.

What got my attention from the get-go was how well-researched and meticulous the book is with the details of the investigation and forensic pathology. The Girl Who Was Taken is full of specific forensic observations that feel like first-hand experiences. We’re introduced to Livia via her studies and work performing several autopsies, body pickups, and minor crime scene inspections that cover anything from the specific depth of protrusions into the cerebral cranium, advance toxicology reports, various different clues explaining (or contradicting based on the body) cause of death and possible timelines; I was pleased that Donlea provided ample opportunities to both showcase Livia’s and by extension, his own knowledge in the field. Her career (and hobby working out with an MMA fighter?) is also smartly utilized as a coverup into her own personal investigation into her sister’s disappearance along with Meagan’s current job as a clerk in a county records office. I’ve grown to dislike amateur detective narratives due to how ridiculous and unrealistic the plot tends to be due to lack of tools and records available to them; the ladies’ careers and backgrounds are smartly setup and provides them strategic opportunity to conduct much more plausible research.

The details also are carried to many other aspects including some great commentary on society’s interest and obsession with true crime experiences. There are great quotes about how the public and news love a dark crime story but only when it has a happy ending or how the people obsess over the survivors and culprits while the other victims are passed over as casualties and just another name forgotten. Megan is highlighted to be the ideal all-American girl with solid grades, community involvement and status compared to Nicole who was disliked and ignored by the press. The book also has a plot element involving a particular club obsessed with disappearances and kidnappings not unlike certain online forums or groups that borderline fetishize crime beyond a mere interest.

Another strong aspect of the book is its well developed and diverse characters. Megan McDonald is written with layers and complexity beyond merely being a survival victim or damaged flower needing protection. The survivors guilt attributed to her escape and the publicity/money from her book cause her to become more detached to the world around her. There’s a recurring quote Megan says that is summarized as people treating her like the girl they knew before the kidnapping or the hero that escaped as a inspiration of hope for others. No one sees her as a hurt person trying to assess her life and move one without a moment of solitude to process what happened to her.

Apart from Livia’s driven and logical investigation and Megan’s introspective reflection over the past year, the book also has chapters dedicated to other character’s perspectives including Casey Dolvan(?), a young man who is connected to Nicole who arrives on her autopsy table for work, the suspected culprit, some of Livia’s coworkers from affiliated agencies, and Nicole Cutty herself. The perspectives and timeline jump around between the present investigations and the months leading up to the summer of 2016 where Nicole and Megan go missing with perspectives and clues often purposely conflicting each other. The various perspectives are diverse and Livia, Megan and Nicole are each written with distinctive personalities and development. Nicole gets a bit of the short stick due to fewer pages her character has to work with, but I really liked how she was portrayed with the feelings of loneliness and abandonment that inspired her to take on her more rebellious persona.

I find the criminal psychology in most crime thriller to be comically terrible but The Girl Who Was Taken again feels well researched in this area. The methodology and psyche is reminiscent of Mind Hunters and Criminal Minds, following well-researched and logical (and by that, as a criminal I mean illogical) serial thoughts. The book also uses the culprit’s perspective to throw a notable red herring about two thirds of the way through which I thought was great.

My only nitpick is that the book had a notable lag for me roughly two thirds of the way into the book. I had a hard time figuring out what happened here and I think it was mostly due to the timeline slowing down both in the past and present tense. Up to that point majority of the narrative was told from Livia, Nicole and Megan’s perspectives, however at this point it starts shifting to the culprit and some of the supporting characters. These perspectives provide valuable insight and context that would normally not be available to Livia/Nicole/Meagan or would require an implausible plot development, however the tone and character voice started to feel diluted and the reveal of clues sidelined in favor of character pscyhe development It was around this time that I also had a sneaking suspicion that I was appreciating the detailed objective qualities of the book’s conception more than the actual story itself.

As a whole, I enjoyed The Girl Who Was Taken. I found it to be dark, detailed, and realistic just how I like my mystery crime thrillers. That said, this is not one I would comfortably recommend for everyone. While the ending suited my taste, it is by no means a happy ending. While also conclusive, it leaves a bit of room open for interpretation rather than a definite case closed. However after a string of disappointing bookclub-style crime mysteries, this dead mystery novel was a breath of fresh air-