Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Published by Penguin Books, 2013

Mila has extraordinary powers of intuition and intelligence. She can read rooms, situations and people, listening to what they say but knowing it isn’t always what they mean. When her dad’s friend Matthew disappears she may be the person to examine the clues that have been carelessly overlooked by others. A pre-planned journey from London across the USA to visit Matthew’s home with her Dad before his friend went missing, also becomes an emotional and mental journey for her.

In the search for Matthew we get the background details of his life and a deep insight into the minds of the characters that help Mila solve the mystery in the end. We also see a side to Mila’s dad that surprises us as we discover that he, like Matthew, has been keeping his own secrets.

Thanks to Rosoff’s writing, always realistic and true to life, we never lose sight of the fact that Mila is just twelve. Like all twelve year olds we see her iron out her own problems, including a recent falling out with her best friend Cat and she wonders if a blossoming new friendship with a boy she meets on her journey will become a romance.

Meg Rosoff has created another page-turning novel for teenagers which draws the reader in from the very first page delivering lots of emotion and unusual twists to the story along the way.