Don’t Try to Find Me

At the start of Brown’s plodding debut, 14-year-old Marley Willits walks out of her parents’ Northern California house. Marley’s mother, Rachel, has no idea why her seemingly happy daughter would do such a thing. She and her no-nonsense husband, Paul, turn to the Internet to find Marley when local police fail to provide assistance to track down yet another runaway. Paul, who’s as cold and calculating as Rachel is histrionic and emotional, sets up FindMarley.com, and uses social networking sites to put the word out about their missing teenager. Brown negates most of the suspense by narrating portions of the novel in Marley’s voice—she’s left home very much on her own accord—and by making her current plight far more predictable than nail biting, casting a run-of-the-mill Facebook predator as the boogie man, whose identity is revealed far too soon. Instead of wondering about Marley’s safety, the reader is left pondering whether everyone is actually better off away from each other. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Weed Literary Agency. (July)