The Summer She Went Missing

Sixteen-year-old Paige Redmond arrives with her middle-class family at the Covington family's luxurious vacation home in Clearwater Ridge for their annual summer stay. Paige's mother and Eleanor Covington, college friends, reunite their families each season. Paige's best friend is the Covingtons' accomplished and bossy daughter, Audrey. Paige also harbors a longstanding crush on Audrey's older brother, Dylan, who is entering his senior year. At the annual Summer Kickoff party hosted by Tripp Shaw, an 18-year-old from one of the area's wealthiest families, Dylan confesses his feelings to Paige and they share their first kiss. Paige spots Audrey standing close to her ex-boyfriend, Kurt Winfield, and assumes they have rekindled their romance. She also briefly notices a girl in a white minidress at the party.

Over the following weeks, Dylan and Paige carry on a secret relationship while Audrey grows increasingly absent, claiming to work at the rafting company or ride horses. Paige overhears the Covingtons discussing $5,000 Audrey stole and their fear she is heading down "a dark path." In early August, Audrey fails to come home. The family discovers everything she told them was a lie: Kurt says they were never back together, and Solomon, the rafting company owner, confirms he never rehired her. Authorities issue a Missing Endangered Person Alert. Paige is consumed by guilt, having chosen her romance over confronting her friend.

Part 2 begins one year later. The Redmonds return at the Covingtons' insistence, but Audrey's case has gone cold. Dylan and Paige's relationship dissolved as Dylan took on a parental role for his younger brother, Nate, and grew distant. Dylan tells Paige that the investigation into Madison Blake, a local teenage girl who vanished weeks before Audrey, has been closed; the sheriff ruled Madison a runaway.

In Audrey's preserved bedroom, Paige discovers a hidden Nokia flip phone beneath a loose floorboard. It contains anonymous text exchanges, and the final message reads: "What are we going to do about Madison?" followed by "Everything's under control." Fearing the phone could expose Audrey's criminal involvement, Dylan and Paige agree to investigate on their own for one week.

They interview Kurt and Solomon, who deny meaningful contact with Audrey, and track down Madison's mother, Delilah, who says Madison called to say she was fine. At Al's Mart in Devil's Den, a remote mountain settlement, a blond clerk with a facial scar introduces herself as Britta Clark, Madison's best friend, and insists Madison is fine.

The investigation pivots when Lenny, the town stables manager, confirms Audrey rode Solomon's horse last summer and that Madison was also seen with Solomon at the stables. Under pressure, Solomon reveals that Madison stole $7,000 from Audrey through a fake horse sale; Audrey stole the remaining $5,000 from her parents. Solomon describes Audrey as consumed by "revenge."

Interspersed throughout the novel are chapters from the perspective of an unnamed girl carrying secrets about "the Bad Stuff." A boy takes her horseback riding at his private stables, and their relationship deepens. These chapters gradually reveal the girl is Audrey and the boy is Oliver Haywood, the older brother of Dylan's friend Brent Haywood.

A phone call with Hannah, Audrey's prep school best friend, yields a key detail. Hannah recalls a drunken Audrey admitting, "Now she's gone. And it's all my fault." Paige realizes she saw Madison in person at last year's Kickoff, dancing in the white minidress.

New leads point toward Tripp. Brent tells Paige that Audrey and Kurt were arguing about Tripp at last year's party. At Haver's Gorge, Kurt confesses the truth: Audrey witnessed Tripp slash Madison's face with a broken bottle and drag her outside during the Kickoff. Kurt was too afraid of the Shaws' influence to help. When Madison was reported missing, Audrey spent the summer consumed with guilt, secretly searching for her, which is why she pushed everyone away.

Dylan initially refuses to believe Tripp is guilty. At a meal at the club, Paige and Dylan tell Tripp they encountered Madison alive; Tripp slips by asking if she had a scar on her face, a detail only the attacker would know. Returning to Al's Mart, Paige discovers the girl with the scar is actually Madison Blake, alive and hiding. Madison reveals that after Tripp slashed and beat her, someone bound her hands, locked her in a car trunk, and dumped her in the river, but she survived. The Shaws paid her mother $100,000 to report Madison as a runaway. Madison shares photographs of her injuries, including a bruise matching Tripp's championship ring.

Tripp is arrested for attempted homicide but claims he left Madison alive in the woods. Three witnesses confirm he never left the house, and Detective Ferrera believes him, leaving Audrey's case unsolved. Dylan confesses that on the night of the Kickoff, Audrey approached him for help, but he dismissed her to be with Paige.

A soccer injury triggers a breakthrough. After Paige twists her ankle at a pickup game, Brent drives her to his house. The scent of grass and sweat in his car matches Madison's memory of the trunk, pointing away from Tripp's golf equipment and toward Brent. In Brent's room, Dylan finds a silver bracelet Madison identifies as the one torn from her wrist the night of the attack. Dylan also recalls a locked underground bunker on the Haywood family ranch.

Madison monitors Brent at his house in the Pines, the area's wealthy enclave, while Paige and Dylan drive to the Haywood ranch in Saddlewood, a nearby rural area. Peering through a window, Paige spots blankets folded in Audrey's distinctive method. Oliver Haywood, who is supposedly traveling abroad, appears and chloroforms her.

Audrey narrates a chapter revealing the full scope of the Haywood brothers' crimes. Brent attacked Madison because she had tried to con him under one of her aliases. Oliver disposed of the evidence and murdered Brent's ex-girlfriend, Larissa Swanson, in the bunker after she threatened to expose Brent's violence. Oliver courted Audrey at Brent's request to monitor whether she would reveal what she knew, but he claims he fell in love with her. When Audrey overheard the brothers' secrets, Oliver imprisoned her rather than kill her, keeping her alive for 10 months.

Paige wakes chained in the bunker and finds a gravely weakened Audrey, who sliced her own wrist to stop Oliver from killing Paige. Paige breaks free from a corroded pipe, and Dylan arrives with stolen keys to free Audrey. As they escape, Oliver ambushes Dylan, but Paige strikes Oliver with a hammer. Brent appears with a rifle aimed at Paige; Madison, who followed Brent from his house, shoots and kills him. Sheriff's deputies arrive.

The epilogue takes place the following summer. Tripp serves time for assault, and Oliver awaits trial for kidnapping and the murder of Larissa, whose body was recovered near the ranch. Madison is in prison for fraud but due for release; Audrey has become her advocate. After counseling and recovery, Audrey plans to room with Paige at Stanford while Dylan attends nearby Berkeley. The group gathers at the river, where Audrey crowns Paige with wildflowers. The novel closes with Paige reflecting that even the softest voices, joined together, can overcome the predatory forces in the world.