Missing!

by Hannah Kuraoka, Bonnie Kuraoka, Meghan Kuraoka

Helping her parents with their house restoration business, Kelly Donovan notices some strange occurrences at the house next door to the one on which they are working and begins to suspect that they are related to a series of baby snatchings.

Genres: Young Adult

Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

About the author

Psedonym of Bonnie and Megan Kuraoka

Reviews

[Jeffrey Canino]

THE LAST VICTIM and MISSING! are two excellent teen mysteries from the sisters Kuraoka, starring their Japanese American Nancy Drew, Kelly Donovan. The books are noteworthy for featuring an Asian American protagonist amongst a sea of overwhelmingly white 90s YA thrillers (Kelly is mixed: Japanese on her mother's side and White/Irish on her father's), but both THE LAST VICTIM and MISSING! are also exciting, fast-paced adventures, demonstrating a level of storytelling craft that most of their contemporaries fall short of.

Kelly is a plucky, charming heroine whose desire to be helpful keeps causing her to stick her nose squarely into trouble as she and her parents move from town to town renovating old houses. And the trouble that the Kuraoka sisters cook up for Kelly is PRETTY TROUBLING: across the two books, Kelly contends with a serial killer who has racked up 47 BODIES (!) across three states and then a baby-napping ring with no compunction whatsoever about killing the mothers or the babies. When not stunning every boy in town with her dazzling looks, Kelly is ::being:: stunned by a baddie with a short, sharp whack over the back of the head. Fortunately, her resourcefulness-- and cast of supportive family and friends-- leave us confident she'll find her way out of each new mess, even if she has to perform some literal cliffhanging along the way.

The formula the Kuraoka sisters establish over the two books is a satisfying one, and the indications at the end of MISSING! as to where a possible Book 3 would head are extremely tantalizing. (Kelly Donovan: Scream Queen!) Tragically, Avon Flare published no more Kelly Donovan novels after these first two. I would have greedily read 100 more.

[Erica Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfectly paced, action-packed, with a plucky heroine to boot—what more could you want?

…well, a THIRD BOOK would’ve been nice 😩

[Paul Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual page number- 147 pages

Too short and too basic of a mystery that makes it stand out.

Actually, the culprit was already revealed to the readers which lessens the fun of mystery solving.

There's some nice tension and I can probably recommend the book for junior readers who want to know what mystery is like as there are some mystery solving aspects that are at least less basic.