Review: Playdate by Alex Dahl

"Have you seen Lucia Blix?

Lucia went home from school for a playdate with her new friend Josie. Later that evening, Lucia's mother Elisa dropped her overnight things round and kissed her little girl goodnight. That was the last time she saw her daughter. The next morning, when Lucia's dad arrived to pick her up, the house was empty. No furniture, no family, no Lucia.  In Playdate, Alex Dahl puts a microscope on a seemingly average, seemingly happy family plunged into a life-altering situation. Who has taken their daughter, and why?"

I hadn't read a thriller for quite a while, so when I got an invitation to review "Playdate" by Alex Dahl, I jumped at the chance.

Elisa Blix, a married mother of two children, is working as a flight attendant. Busy, stressed, and constantly preoccupied, she nevertheless is reluctant to agree to a playdate between her daughter Lucia and another little girl she's never met before. The mother wins her over - Line is cool, sophisticated, and friendly, and Elisa ultimately decides no harm will be done. The playdate extends to a sleepover, Lucia's first, and Elisa thinks nothing of it. 

It's not until she's on a work flight back home the next day that she realises what a terrible mistake she's made. 

Playdate hits the ground running and doesn't stop. The narrative is divided between Elisa, Lucia a journalist called Selma, Jacqueline who tries to convince Lucia that she is her real mother, and Marcus, a prisoner doing time for manslaughter. The changes between narrators is slick and skilfully done, each devoting just the right amount of time to fill in a piece of the story without giving too much away. Elisa, particularly, is a well-drawn out character. A loving, devoted mother, but with a flawed past that makes you question that although the reader is rooting for her to get her daughter back, her actions make her much less sympathetic. Jacqueline, too - although she is literally a child abductor, reading about her reasons why makes you question whether she or not she deserves a sliver of sympathy for what happened to her. Elisa's and Jacqueline's stories, after all, are deeply interconnected as we find out towards the end. 

It's a fast-paced, carefully and meticulously crafted story, suspense dangling all the way through until a satisfying conclusion that leaves the reader to wonder what will happen to these characters after the close of the novel. Questions are left unanswered that leaves the characters running off with a life of their own. It's  not a black-and-white good-and-bad people story, it challenges the reader to question where their sympathies lie. 

If you're a fan of novelists like Sophie Hannah, then I urge you to give this novel your time.