Looking For Emily by Fiona Longmuir
Published by Nosy Crow
LOOKING For Emily is a mystery for young teenagers that offers the reminder that nothing is what it quite seems to be on the surface. This thread running through the book ties together themes of change, making friends and solving a mystery in a sleepy seaside town along with a rich history of pirates, missing treasure and missing people beneath.
While many books centred around crime and following clues are aimed at adults, those for younger readers are able to capture the elements that work perfectly within the genre such as a fast pace, constantly underestimated protagonists and a powerful collaborative friendship.
When 12-year-old Lily moves from the city to the small and seemingly mundane seaside town of Edge, she knows nothing of what she’ll discover there. She is frustrated with her mum for bringing her somewhere she knows no one and can’t imagine could be any fun.
At first she refuses to try to get to know the other young people around her, but just as loneliness and boredom begin to set in, her life in Edge turns around. She stumbles upon an abandoned house that seems to have been converted into a museum that no one else knows about, filled with the possessions of a young girl named Emily who seems to no longer live in town.
When she befriends Sam and Jay from her school she shares her secret with them, and together the three of them take to the library nearly every day in a secret investigation as to who this girl could be, what happened to her and why nobody else knows about or speaks of the museum of her things.
Alongside Lily’s story, the novel is interspersed with chapters about Emily’s life in the time leading up to her disappearance and her connection to the town’s history with pirates that has become the curse of her family.
Each of these two sides of the story build upon the reader’s knowledge of the mystery piece by piece in different times, a feature which greatly adds to the excitement in turning every page, as what one knows, the other doesn’t.
Lily becomes almost obsessed with learning what happened to Emily and while at some moments she gets stuck in the past of a young girl just like her whose memory exists in a room of tattered books and borrowed pencils, her friends are along for the journey with her.
Sam, Jay and Lily develop a heartwarming closeness, pulled together in excitement and their shared secret. They face challenges, clues and riddles together with determination to bring light and justice to the case of this missing girl in their town.
Lily uncovers the secrets of this town but she also learns about adjusting to and learning to love new environments and people. The mystery alone would make this an exciting and fun read for the summer, but the development Lily experiences is what will stick with and perhaps even help its audience.
