The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

This was a win from Stacy's Books.

This coming of age story was a bit sad as well. It is also a story of a crime. Lizzie and Evie are neighbouring 13 year old kids. They live in each others pockets and seemingly know the other person even better than they know themselves. But it is only seemingly so. One day Evie disappears and by a series of deductions it is decided it is an abduction and kidnapping and everyone including the police know who the kidnapper is.

This was where the story gets a bit different. The girls abduction and disappearance is the highlight and only talk in this small town and everyone is desperate to find both the missing girl and the man who abducted her. It is only Lizzie to whom the police can turn to for even small pieces of the missing puzzle to try to track them down.  Over the period of nineteen days it then also dawns on Lizzie that the story is not one of abduction but that Evie may have gone by her own free will but Lizzie's hands are tied as to how this could ever be told.

The secrets in each family gets exposed one by one. Some of them will remain hidden again, not acknowledged by anyone and life will never seem the same for either girl. When Evie returns (assumption being that she escaped, but Lizzie knows that she was allowed to leave), the situation becomes bizarre between the two. There seems to be a boundary which Lizzie cannot cross and Evie seems to have grown up and away from Lizzie in immeasurable ways.

A simple telling of a story that happens all the time. This time the return of Evie was a happy ending for her family, and for the authorities,  though not necessarily for Evie herself.  Disturbing that thirteen year olds are no longer kids and that such powerful emotions can instigate events that could turn catastrophic.