Seeing your book marketed as the new Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train might be flattering for a debut author, but when your story is as original as this debut thriller, the expectations may be more of a curse than a blessing.

Bec Winter is 16 and experiencing a summer much like any teenager in the early 2000s: working at a fast-food outlet, pushing parental boundaries by experimenting with booze, boys, petty theft and hanging out with her best friend. Then Bec disappears without a trace. Eleven years later, a young woman with an uncanny resemblance to the missing girl turns up. From the start we know she is an impostor, and in a nod perhaps to the original unreliable narrator telling the story of another Rebecca (de) Winter, we never learn the impostor’s name. But through her eyes we gradually understand that all is very much not as it seems in the Winter household.

The impostor goes to great lengths to fit into Bec’s old life and initially revels in the experience of family life in the suburbs. But in trying to divert the attention of the original police investigator, she unwittingly begins to unravel the mystery of Bec’s disappearance herself.

The author’s background as a screenwriter is evident in the cinematic quality of the flashback descriptions of a long hot Canberra summer and the nuanced language of the teen dialogue. The twist at the end is a cracker.

Reviewed by Maryanne Vagg