17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

Seventeen-year-old Lauren is having visions of girls who have gone missing. And all these girls have just one thing in common—they are 17 and gone without a trace. As Lauren struggles to shake these waking nightmares, impossible questions demand urgent answers: Why are the girls speaking to Lauren? How can she help them? And… is she next? As Lauren searches for clues, everything begins to unravel, and when a brush with death lands her in the hospital, a shocking truth emerges, changing everything.

With complexity and richness, Nova Ren Suma serves up a beautiful, visual, fresh interpretation of what it means to be lost

Characters We follow the story of Lauren. In the early pages of the book she begins an obsession with flyers about missing girls, all aged 17. She begins to focus so much on questions she has regarding where they might have gone that it not only disrupts her mental focus, but causes damage to her relationship between her and her mother, and her boyfriend Jamie.

Plot The more interested Lauren becomes in the missing girls, the more connected to them she feels. Even going to far as to dreaming of them, having visions of them, hearing them talk to her and feeling their emotions. This obsession drives Lauren to become a detective herself and go to the families and places they were last scene and taking an active roll in finding her own answers.

Writing The flyers are used to break up sections of the book as well as chapters. There is also a lot of research and details that go into the story about statistics of missing girls. It does become clear that Lauren's obsession is a distraction to her life and causing difficulties in her day to day activities, that her boyfriend and mother soon become affected by her mental stability.

Originality Lauren mainly focuses on two missing girls in the story, Abby and Fiona. Although several other girls are mentioned, the reader is given info from their missing flyers but beyond the flyer we really don't get as much detective work into their cases as we do with Abby's.

 Although I do agree in the summary that this book is complex, visual, rich and fresh. I still felt some disconnection to the main character that I didn't think was necessary. There are several missing girls that are introduced to the story that the reader never gets an answer to what happened to them. In my opinion those pages would have been better spent learning more about our main character Lauren. Her past, why she doesn't have any friends. And the relationship she has with her mother, or even more about her mother's life as well. It's a great discussion topic book.