The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean is a story about three sisters who go missing one night and all the factors that led to their disappearance. Told from the view of one of their friends many years later, there is much conjecture and rumours and it is up to the reader to sift through the various stories to discover the truth.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the mystery surrounding many of the events and the way each reader may come to a different conclusion regarding these many events.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book in return for an honest review.

I loved this so much! I've seen it compared to THE VIRGIN SUICIDES which is one of my favourite books, and the comparison is definitely apt. McLean's writing evokes a similar nostalgic, bittersweet feeling of coming of age, suburban teenhood. I love being immersed in the 90s era setting especially. The writing was so immersive and atmospheric, I was so drawn in to the world and the mystery and couldn't put it down.

The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is an incredibly well written atmospheric mystery novel that drew me into Tikka's world right to the very last page. Felicity McLean has a marvellous way with words, whether it was describing the more mundane aspects of the character's life, "There I watched the world through the glass eye of my microscope, pinning things under my focus" or detailing all the little clues that are interwoven throughout the novel. "They had six kneecaps, ninety-nine vertebrae, three skulls and thirty fingernails. Six kneecaps, forty-eight carpal bones, and more than three million strands of blonde hair, all tinged alien-green by the chlorine in their pool..."

The story is told from the view of one of the best friends of the Van Apfel Girls, Tikka, who has returned to the small town after spending several years overseas. And in doing so, is plagued by guilt as she recounts the events that happened so many years ago and learns a few new details from some unlikely sources.

For a mystery, by the end of the novel I was expecting at least a few of the questions that had been building throughout the story to be answered by the time I finished, but unfortunately I was left more than a bit wanting. Though there was still some sense of closure for Tikka despite that.

* This eBook ARC was provided by HarperCollins Publishers Australia through NetGalley for an honest review.

We move through this book switching between the narratives of 11 year old Tikka Molloy and the now grown up Tikka Molloy. In the summer of 1992 Tikka spends her time between home, school and The Apfel's house. The Van Apfels are neighbours whom live in the same street and the three girls go to the same school. as Tikka and her sister. That is until the Van Apfel girls disappear. Set in a small, hot, stinking countrty town in Australia this novel would easily enthral both YA and adults alike. Part thriller, part coming of age this book is beautifully written with a quirky cast of characters - atypical of any small country Australian town. An egaging read that will haunt you long after the last page has been finished. A big thanlyou to NetGalley for the AR Copy.

This is a really beautifully written book and it evokes a fantastic mysterious/eerie sense to it that suits the story perfectly. I loved the setting of one long hot summer in 1992, it brought back such memories. I also loved the references to the Lindy Chamberlain case. I did prefer the scenes set back in 1992 over the current time. It was easy to resonate with Tikka and the Van Apfel girls. There are many layers to the story and no definitive conclusion which leads it to be more literary fiction than a commercial mystery or crime novel. I prefer not to be left open with possibility at the end of a novel but understand it suited this style of book and the way it was written. The author is a talent to look out for in the future.

This is a darkly themed book which was quite slow moving. Written from the perspective of a child who returns home as an adult to be with her sick sister, with a lot of moving from present back to the past. I found it slow moving and probably a bit too repetitive- some may have been essential for the developed of the suspense in the story but I think it was overdone. Domestic violence is a common theme as is religious overzealousness.
While it was well written I felt the story could have been streamlined.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publisher Australia for an ebook copy to review and review.

I loved this book - I felt like I was there among the girls. The descriptions of the 1970's and 1980's were so vivid to me and the way the story alternated from the present back to the past was very well done. Highly recommended.

This engrossing book had me hooked from the very beginning. Everything about it made me happy. The tone is light, from Tikka's point of view as she reflects on the disappearance of her best friends and neighbours, The Van Apfel Girls, when she was a child. Tikka is home from Baltimore for a visit after hearing that her beloved sister Laura has cancer.

Ruth, Hannah and Cordelia and Tikka's sister Laura, were inseparable, spending time walking together to school, playing made up games, sweltering in the heat together and cooling off in the pool. Their good times however are always overshadowed by the harsh nature of the father of the Van Apfels. He is bad tempered, ultra religious and believes in punishing harshly for even the smallest misdemeanour, minor infractions earn the sisters a beating and wrath. It is uncomfortable and it isn't spoken of but Tikka and Laura know that their own happy home life is very different to that happening down the street.

It is 1992, Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo and Lindy Chamberlain has just been exonerated, it is hot, so hot. The school is working up to the Summer Showstopper, a talent show at the end of the year, Tikka is writing a show based on the Azaria story. Meanwhile the older Van Apfel Girls plan to run away with Laura's help while everyone is watching the Showstopper.

The story loops around and around as Tikka reflects back on the events leading up to the girls disappearance. There is a wonderful cast of characters, a creepy teacher, the sinister Mr Van Apfel, nosy neighbour, Tikka's mum and dad who watch the activities of the neighbours.

I loved everything about this book, the point of view is fabulously written, Tikka's voice is so authentic. As we circle around to the girls disappearance the tension is palpable, Seen through the eyes of a child we get a different perspective of the time after the disappearance than we would have if the book was narrated by an adult. Tikka the adult has so many unresolved emotions and the pain she felt as a child, the emptiness and loss she felt are with us from the beginning of the book and remain the whole way through. I loved her voice.

This is right up there for me in my picks of the year.
Thanks so much to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to this book.

‘Don’t you know? The Van Apfel girls are gone.’

In the summer of 1992, sisters Hannah, Cordelia, and Laura Van Apfel vanished from an outdoor school concert. Twenty years later, Tikka Molloy still imagines she might see the Van Apfel girls again, and when she returns to her family home to support her ill sister, she cannot help but reexamine the events of that fateful summer.

“We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song,...”

Perhaps best described as suburban gothic, part enigmatic mystery, part haunting coming of age tale, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone is told largely from the perspective of Tikka at age 11.
Tik is a charming narrator, and McLean has struck just the right balance between precociousness and naivety. With both the wisdom and innocence of childhood, she relates her experiences of the summer, from scorching days poolside, to news reports of Lindy Chamberlain’s vindication, to the secrets she and her sister, Laura, kept for their friends, Hannah, Cordelia, and Ruth Van Apfel.

“For so long we’d been haunted by those girls. Since the moment they first disappeared. We were the ones left behind, Laura and I. Defined by what was long gone. And if not that, then what? Who should we be?”

With adult hindsight, Tikka has some regrets about that summer. It’s a large part of the reason she can’t let go, and McLean thoughtfully explores the way in which Tikka was, and continues to be, affected by the missing Van Apfel girls.

It’s Cordelia, the beautiful, enigmatic middle sister that looms largest in Tikka’s mind, the target of her father’s zealotry, the subject of childish innuendo, admired and envied in almost equal measure, despite being just thirteen the year she vanished. McLean’s portrayal of the Van Apfel girls is limited, largely filtered through Tik’s unsophisticated viewpoint, but still compelling.

“We ran elaborate underwater handstand competitions In the Van Apfel pool that day. First round, second round, best of the best. Our skinny legs stabbing at the sky like the bows of some demented orchestra.”

I have to admit a part of the appeal of this story is the nostalgia it evokes for me. Tik’s experience of childhood is not that much different than my own- handstand competitions in the pool, thongs sticking to melting bitumen roads, Sunnyboy’s dug out of the freezer, scaring ourselves half to death with seances during sleepovers. I even had pet mice, and a river ran through the bush at the bottom of my street.

“There was before and there was ever after.”

It’s only fair that prospective readers know that the fate of the Van Apfel girls remains largely unresolved, for me, it wasn’t really an issue. An atmospheric and poignant novel, I thought The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone was an engaging and mesmeric debut from Felicity McLean.

Centered around five friends in Australia during 1992, this book tells the story of the three Van Apfel girls that disappear and Laura and Tikka, their two friends that are left behind once they're gone. Narrated by Tikka you get a small glimpse into the lives the girls led in the weeks before the disappearance, in particular the lives of the Van Apfel girls and the lasting impact it has on Tikka and Laura as they grow into women, never finding answers to the questions they seek. Touching on everything from their home life, (extreme Christian fundamentalist father) school life, (with the new slightly creepy and odd male teacher) and their friendships.

This book had great promise and strong bones however I felt it fell just short of the mark for me. Whilst the mystery of the disappearance remained at the end, there were other untied ends left (the extent to which their father harmed them, the involvement of Mr. Avery, the pregnancy etc.) that I sought closure on.

The Chamberlain case was the background to my entire childhood. Outside, we had smiling Safety House signs screwed to each letterbox in the street. Every house safe. Every house a refuge. While inside, the court case of a mother alleged to have murdered her child played out each night, in prime time, in the lounge room.

Yes, this is my memory too. And that adults all had an opinion about Lindy Chamberlain. However, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean is not an account of the Chamberlain case. Instead, the case provides an interesting parallel to the fictitious part of this book – the disappearance of the three Van Apfel sisters, Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth.

The story is told from the perspective of Tikka – she’s almost twelve-years-old when the Van Apfel girls go missing, and their disappearance haunts her. Decades later, Tikka returns to her home town, hoping to understand what happened.

Hints about the possible reasons for the girls’ disappearance are dropped early in the story, with two frontrunners – a physically abusive father, also a religious zealot, and a new male teacher at the girls’ school, who seems to be hanging around at unlikely times.

Did McLean lay enough groundwork for these scenarios to be plausible? Yes, in the case of the father but no in the case of the teacher, whose circumstances were a little contrived. I won’t say more for fear of spoilers but with each suspect, the establishment of motive felt obvious and clumsy – I prefer my clues more deftly embedded in the story.

I enjoyed the detail of the girls’ lives – cruising around on bikes, swimming in backyard pools, the excitement of the a school production.

We ran elaborate underwater handstand competitions in the Van Apfel pool that day. First round, second round, best of the best. Our skinny legs stabbing at the sky like the bows of some demented orchestra.

I also enjoyed the well-observed dynamic between Tikka and her older sister, Laura, and between the Van Apfel girls.

My sister’s barometer…had always been two years older, two years superior to mine. And she was right of course, and at the same time she was wrong. I was responsible and not guilty. I was both things, and neither. Like the valley: a thing and a void.

This is a quick, non-taxing read and while enjoyable, it’s not a story that will linger with me.

2.5/5 I had higher hopes.

I received my copy of The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone from the publisher, Harper Collins Australia, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

‘We saw more of those girls after they disappeared than we ever did before.’

In the summer of 1992, when Tikka Malloy was ‘eleven and one-sixth old’, her three best friends — the three Van Apfel sisters— disappeared. Two families, living in the suburbs. Mr and Mrs Van Apfel and their daughters Hannah, Cordelia and Ruth. Mr and Mrs Malloy and their daughters Laura and Tikka (a nickname everyone seems to use). And, as Tikka remembers, the Azaria Chamberlain case is the background to her childhood. Parents hover, vigilant over their children. The girls have secrets, both from their parents and from each other.
Twenty years later and still haunted by the disappearance of the Van Apfel girls, Tikka returns home to visit her older sister and parents.

Tikka is the narrator of this story, which moves between her childhood and the present. Tikka was an observant child but not always able to understand what she saw. There are some delightfully humorous passages, and other passages where any adult reading would want to reach into the narrative and intervene. But we can’t do that, we can only travel with Tikka as the story slowly unfolds.

So what happened to the Van Apfel girls? Tikka feels guilty: both she and her sister Laura knew that the Van Apfel girls were planning to run away, but they never mentioned it to the police. But did they run away, or were they taken? The girls disappear from an outdoor school concert. There’s a teacher who seemed a little too interested in Cordelia, and there’s Mr Van Apfel who was a controlling and violent man. Some people knew this but chose to keep quiet. Laura and Tikka are not the only ones who kept secrets from the police. As we find out, twenty years later, the local Tupperware saleswoman and local busy-body, Mrs McCausley also withheld information.

I finished this novel wishing that (some) of the adults had made different choices. I felt for Tikka, whose knowledge of events was incomplete, and whose interpretation is coloured by her age.

This is a really impressive debut novel and one that will stay with me.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

WOW! Just wow! This was easily one of the best psychological thrillers I have read all year! It’s hard to believe that this is the author’s first foray into the mystery genre.

Tikka, who has been haunted by the disappearance of three childhood friends and neighbours, the “Van Apfel girls”, twenty years ago, returns to Australia to support her sister, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Coming back to her small hometown nestled into a narrow river valley out of Sydney brings back many suppressed memories, and she tries to piece together the events leading up to the tragedy, as seen through the eyes of her eleven-year-old self.

Let’s start with the characters: children characters can be so tricky! They are often either too old for their years, or too YA for the adult reader. But these girls were just perfect. They came to life for me as if I had watched them play in the pool, walk down the dusty hot road to school, bicker over their homework. I couldn’t get enough of them. Lately, I have talked a lot about the importance of showing rather than telling, and the author has nailed just that. It was all so vivid, so atmospheric. The small town, its small town politics and gossip, the heat, the flies, the MENACE that was running like a dark undercurrent through it all.

I think the power of this book lay in the things that were left unsaid as much as the things we did get shown. I appreciate that this can be frustrating for some readers who like things tied in neat little bows and tidily resolved at the end. This was not that type of book. But woah – what an emotional impact it had on me. Seen through the eyes of eleven-year-old Tikka, the mystery of the disappearance of the three Van Apfel sisters takes on a whole other dimension than your average thriller. Innocent girl’s eyes, seeing things that she cannot make sense of. Disturbing things. Things that made me gasp out loud and frantically turn the pages. This book really got under my skin!

I think I am rambling. It is impossible to tell you any more without giving something away, so I will leave it at that. Just to say that I absolutely loved every minute of this book. It is still on my mind, and I think it will be for some time yet. It utterly captivated me. I also really enjoyed the backdrop of a hot Aussie summer with the mystery of the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain making headlines again. I adored Tikka’s voice, who tells the story from her memory of that long ago summer. I loved the eerie vibe and the menace that overshadowed the storyline, like the stench from the river Tikka describes so vividly.

If you enjoy atmospheric Aussie mysteries, then I highly recommend picking this one up – it has everything I adore in a psychological thriller. I can see why this book has been compared to the old Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock, but even though there are some similarities (the mysterious disappearance of three girls, the eerie supernatural vibe of the landscape), this is a book that stands very firmly on its own feet and is quite unlike all of the others I have read this year so far. A definite five-star read for me, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough!

I requested this book belatedly after seeing it pop up in a few places. It's got one of those interesting titles and alluring covers and, though I didn't entirely know what I was going to be reading, the notion of disappearing girls seemed to be something that sat firmly in my reading comfort zone.

I very much liked McLean's writing and note - though this is her first novel - she's previously ghost-written a number of books, so her prose reflect a comfortable confidence.

I wasn't sure if it was just the cover and its blurb conjuring up visions of some sort of ethereal presence reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock but there was a strong sense of eeriness throughout. Having said that, the plot itself is more 'grounded' than "Picnic" and the sense of menace more tangible. 

It unfolds from the point of view of Tikka (which is a nickname and I don't think we learn her real name. As an aside, I kept thinking we may eventually find out the character is male or something!).

We meet Tikka in the present but she takes us back to her childhood, to the time of the disappearance of the Van Apfel girls. It jumps about in time a little (in the past) and it occasionally confused me in that respect as I wasn't sure if things were happening before or after other events. 

That's obviously not a big issue but just means that I found the girls' story a little disjointed in parts.

I adored young Tikka and her complete lack of guile. As a kid she's sassy and smart. As an adult she's never recovered from the guilt of the secrets she kept when the girls disappeared.

This story - of course - is as much about the lives of Hannah, Cordelia and Ruth 'before' as it is about their disappearance. And it's as much about Tikka and Laura as it is about the Van Apfel girls. The blurb talks about a 'coming of age' story and it is in some ways though it's about such a short moment in time that it's more of a snapshot about an idyllic and not-so-idyllic childhood. It's about childhood innocence, friendships and the lives we keep hidden.

As an adult reading this novel and in retrospect for Tikka and Laura there would have been a lot of red flags: the bruises, the secrets, the feelings of unease experienced around certain men and the way 'God' spoke to Mr Van Apfel and instructed him when it came to disciplining Cordie.

And it's Cordie who remains vivid in Tikka's memory as she's the most enigmatic of the three girls, drawing more attention - both good and bad.

"She knew more. She sensed more. Cordie kept strange, private things curled up in her carelessness that were too tight for the rest of us to unravel. Of course she'd come back to flaunt that in our faces. It seemed so obvious afterwards." p 30 (in my ebook version).

I'm a bit of a control freak so like answers and closure but can also appreciate that we don't always need to know. However I probably would have liked a little more clarity. We kinda learn the why and what happens (after all, Tikka tells us it all starts with Cordelia's broken arm and her 'fall' from the tree) but it also offers up some sense of why there was a time imperative for the girl's disappearance.

The strengths of this novel for me is the ethereal quality I mention and McLean's writing. Her character development is also really strong and I loved young Tikka in the same way everyone adored Harper Lee's Scout's earnestness. Older Tikka is living a half-life of sorts and it's a reminder how secrets, guilt and the unknown can impact on us.

"You've got to find a way to live with it," Laura tells Tikka years later.

As an aside, I also enjoyed the glimpses / reminders of Aussie cultural history, particularly the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, and conviction and exoneration of her mother, which figured strongly in the novel.