#BlogTour-‘The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone’ by Felicity McLean

About the book…

‘The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone’ by Felicity McLean is published by Point Blank books on 6th June, many thanks to them and Anne Cater of Random Things Book Tours for my paperback gifted copy for the tour.

‘A taut, beautifully written thriller with a scorching expansive setting. ‘The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone’ is a fantastic debut and a story that lingers.

Lisa Ballantyne, author of The ‘Guilty One’

‘How do you escape your childhood, emotionally, actually? This compelling mystery by Felicity McLean has a rare depth of psychological and emotional truth. It will engage your heart.’

Delia Ephron, author of ‘Siracusa’

‘A smart, classy thriller blazing with the heat of Australia that slowly reveals
its many layers.‘ Fiona Mozley, author of Man Booker shortlisted ‘Elmet’

‘Engrossing and goosebumpy from start to finish, this novel about three young sisters who
vanish all together one night has the chilling feel of true events that are stranger than
fiction, and the stuff of nightmares….A novel that is as delightful as it is terrifying,
and just scary good.’Tim Johnston, bestselling author of ‘Descent’ and ‘The Current’

‘I deeply admire the languid, lived-in prose of Felicity McLean’s lovely novel THE VAN APFEL
GIRLS ARE GONE. This is a story as much about forgiving ourselves our own childhoods, as
it is about acknowledging and embracing the people we’ve become because of those
adolescent (and sometimes life altering) choices.’
Hannah Pittard, author of ‘Visible Empire’

‘We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn’t the one we were trying to recall to begin with.’
Tikka Molloy was eleven years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in an isolated suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters – Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth –mysteriously disappeared during the school’s ‘Showstopper’ concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river.
Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved. Now, years later, Tikka has returned home and is beginning to make sense of that strange moment in time.The summer that shaped her. The girls that she never forgot.
Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, THE VAN APFEL GIRLS
ARE GONE is part mystery, part coming-of-age story – a perfect summer chiller with a dark
shimmering unexplained absence at its heart.

This is, quite literally, a brilliant book for summer, it captures a bygone era (nineties Australia) where the reminiscences of narrator,Tikka Molloy, hark back to a time of innocence lost, buried truths and the often painful consequences of female friendship and sisterhood.

2 sets of sisters-Tikka and Laura as well as the titular Van Apfel girls-and their relationships/envy towards each other are explored through flashbacks to the summer the girls disappeared and Tikka’s return, decades later as her sister,Laura, fights cancer.

Her return sparks memories that she has spent a long time trying to bury or ignore, and her adult perspective throws light on things that her teenage self couldn’t quite grasp,throwing a whole new light on what happened that year. In doing so, she is able to try and face, full on, the ghosts that have haunted her ever since.

A literary meditation on love, loss and families, this is exactly the book for fans of ‘The Virgin Suicides’. It has a keen sense of place and time, the Australian setting is absolutely a character in itself and this is expressed so well, you can feel and smell the atmosphere rise off the page. As you read, the mystery of what actually happened becomes secondary to unravelling the past at the same time as coping with the actions of the present.

A stunning debut with darkly comic undertones, a wry sense of wonder and keenly captured female protagonists, I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this incredible book.

About the author…

Felicity McLean was born in Sydney Australia. She graduated at Sydney University with a BA
in English and Australian literature and worked as a book publicist before embarking on a freelance career. Her journalism has appeared in The Daily Telegraph, The Courier Mail and the Big Issue, among others, and she has ghost-written celebrity autobiographies.

‘The Van Apfel Girls AreGone’ is her first novel.

She lives with her English husband and two young children in Australia.

Twitter @FelicityMcLean

Instagram @felicity_mclean_author

Links-https://felicitymclean.com/

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