About The Book
It was meant to be your daughter’s first sleepover.
Now it’s an abduction.
Lucia Blix went home from school for a playdate with her new friend Josie. Later that evening, her mother Elisa dropped her overnight things round and shared a glass of wine with Josie’s mother. Then she kissed her little girl goodnight and drove home.
That was the last time she saw her daughter.
The next morning, when Lucia’s dad arrived to pick her up, the house was empty. No furniture, no family, no Lucia.
In Playdate, Alex Dahl puts a microscope on a seemingly average, seemingly happy family plunged into a life-altering situation.
Who has taken their daughter, and why?
My Review
With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. Elisa is a bit reluctant to let her young daughter go to a friend’s house after school for a ‘play date’ but because she can see how excited Lucia is, how well she gets on with her friend and the friendliness of her mother she agrees. But her world falls apart when there is no sign of the house being lived in the day after when her husband goes to collect his daughter.
What makes this novel so original is the lack of storyline involving the police investigation. Instead the novel concerns Elisa trying to come to terms with Lucia’s disappearance, Lucia, confused, frightened and not knowing what to believe, Jacqueline, abductor, understandably damaged, Marcus, a man who is in an open prison for reasons unknown and Selma, a journalist who is determined to find out what what happened.
The narrative switched between them all constantly throughout but it was very easy to follow. And with the chapters being so short I found it difficult to put aside. Waiting to see what would happen next to the character concerned.
It is one of those novels where the reader is aware of what happened fairly early on but not why. The reason is revealed in the latter half of the novel, but I had decided a lot earlier that I wasn’t that keen on Elisa. I struggled to know why until the very end but I was glad that my gut instinct was a correct one.
Whilst my favourite character by a long was Selma, simply for her determination and her care of Medusa her cat I had a lot of empathy for Jacqueline. I know her actions were wrong but I could understand why she did what she did.
Playdate is one of the more original crime novels that I have read this year. A fascinating storyline and I also enjoyed the descriptions of the countries in which the novel takes place.
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