Dear Amy

LoveReading Says

One of our Books of the Year 2016.

Margot Lewis is a classics teacher in a Cambridge school. She's also the agony aunt for the local newspaper, dealing with problems from the loneliness of a recent widower to a teenager wondering if she might be pregnant. The disappearance of local girl Katie Browne, a former student, is weighing on her mind when she receives a letter in childish handwriting from a Bethan Avery, begging for help: "I've been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man.

I'm afraid he'll kill me."  But Bethan vanished decades earlier, and the police brush away Margot's worries. Author Helen Callaghan, a former bookseller, intersperses scenes of Katie being held in a cellar by a violent man with Margot's attempts to get to the bottom of the letters she is receiving in this compulsive, intelligent thriller which I gulped down in a few nights. A dark and intriguing debut.

If you liked Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan, try Beside Myself by Ann Morgan or Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon.

Reviewed by Alison Flood
I was that child who used to read under the table during dinner and in the corners at family gatherings.
More reviews by Alison Flood

About Dear Amy

Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters - but none like the one she's just received: Dear Amy, I don't know where I am. I've been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man.

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