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In 1951, Edie Green lives in a small English town with her widowed mother, who conducts seances in the evenings to make ends meet. Edie is unpopular and lonely. When she sees something forbidden involving wealthy, pretty and popular Lucy, she mentions it to the girl. Immediately, Lucy brings Edie into her confidence. Edie is pleased to have a new friend, but the secret she knows starts to get out of hand. And then Lucy disappears.
In 2018, Edie is still living in the same small town. One day, she thinks she sees her old friend Lucy, and she can’t shake her worry about her. Whatever happened to her? The mystery has never been solved. While Edie is getting confused about a lot in her life, she knows this: she has to figure out what happened. She owes it to Lucy.
One Puzzling Afternoon is a mystery as well as a window into the mind of a woman with ever-worsening dementia. Edie is frustrating her family and befuddling strangers, and she is determined that her life is fine; they are all wrong about her memory. She is also very determined to make sure everyone listens to what she has to say about a 60-year-old case of a missing friend. If she could just remember…
The story alternates between the present and the past, as pieces of Edie’s memory are dislodged and float to the surface. This novel is billed as similar to Elizabeth Is Missing, which it is, but the difference is that in this book there’s no question that a character is missing, and in the other, it’s only the unreliable narrator who thinks the friend is missing. Both are good. I feel this was somewhat more straightforward, as it led toward a solid resolution of a mystery.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes a couple of uses of mild language, and a few instances of the name of Deity in vain, as well as a few uses of British (bl-) profanity. There are references to a man having a sexual relationship with a teen girl, a character having a secret abortion, and a young man attempting to kiss an unwilling girl. Violence includes a person being killed.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
