The Missing Half

When The Missing Half begins, Nicole Monroe is defined by the trauma of losing her sister seven years before. Her life is in a perpetual state of liminality, as she has not figured out how to truly exist without Kasey. Her apartment is messy and in disrepair, causing her embarrassment when she first shows it to Jenna, one of the only people she has ever had in her apartment. She deals with her alcohol use disorder throughout the novel, constantly oscillating between consuming it and discarding it. Additionally, she acknowledges that she has a “dead-end” job, which she has only been able to keep because of Brad’s kindness and his relationship with her parents. Each of these traits, in Nic’s eyes, is rooted in the grief that she feels over having lost her sister and—perhaps more importantly—the trauma of never knowing the truth.

Similarly, after her sister’s disappearance, Jenna became consumed with figuring out what happened to Jules. The effects of her grief are not as pronounced as Nic’s, as she has a stable job and has attempted to build a life for herself in the wake of Jules’s disappearance. However, the depth of her grief is not as apparent as that of Nic, whose first-person