What do you think?
Rate this book
Missing Abby
WHEN 13-YEAR-OLD EMMA bumps into her old friend Abby on the bus one Saturday afternoon, she later realizes that she was the last person to see Abby before her mysterious disappearance. Amidst the media frenzy and everyone’s struggle to come to terms with the possibility of Abby’s death, Emma starts a terrifying journey of her very own, as she uncovers things that lead to a discovery even the police have not thought of. . . .
From the acclaimed author of Child X comes a thrilling and memorable novel for readers of all abilities.
Praise for Child X :
“It is compelling, heartfelt, and sadly, totally believable. British slang will not deter the reader from racing through this gripping tale.”— VOYA , Starred
From the Hardcover edition.
From the acclaimed author of Child X comes a thrilling and memorable novel for readers of all abilities.
Praise for Child X :
“It is compelling, heartfelt, and sadly, totally believable. British slang will not deter the reader from racing through this gripping tale.”— VOYA , Starred
From the Hardcover edition.
208 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 2004
8 people are currently reading
352 people want to read
About the author
Lee Weatherly
17 books28 followersLee Weatherly was born in 1967 and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. She lives with her husband in Hampshire, England, where she writes, goes on walks, collects frogs, and has a cat named Bernard.
Lee Weatherly also writes under the pseudonyms L.A. Weatherly, Kitty Wells, and Titania Woods.
Lee Weatherly also writes under the pseudonyms L.A. Weatherly, Kitty Wells, and Titania Woods.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
March 2, 2018
Abby is missing long before she disappears at the beginning of Missing Abby by Lee Weatherly. Narrated by Abby's former-best-friend, Emma, the plot examines how their friendship deteriorated in the past while looking at the events surrounding Abby's disappearance in the present.
This novel, Weatherly's second, uses Abby's disappearance to tell Emma's story. The novel is told in chapters, one for each day after Abby is reported missing. As the story moves farther away from that day, the focus shifts from wondering what happened to Abby as readers begin to wonder what happened between the two girls. Because at thirteen, they are still girls--a fact that is not always obvious from the narration that seems to sound more like the voice of a seventeen-year-old.
Through a strange coincidence, Emma is the last person to see Abby before she gets off a local bus and vanishes. When Emma has to report everything she remembers about that day to the police she also starts to remember their old friendship. Anger often flares up through the worry Emma shows for Abby. Weatherly handles these conflicting emotions well, her narration making it clear that Abby is missed even while Emma is still angry with her.
Just why Emma is so angry at Abby is not clear until the last half of the story. Her reasons for ending the friendship are revealed in dribs and drabs that interrupt the regular narrative: "Freak. The word slithered into my mind, breaking the spell." Through these fragments readers can piece the girls' back-story together before Emma reveals the finer details.
Weatherly maintains a level of suspense throughout the story as Emma and Abby's friends try to learn what happened to her. Emma's cryptic references to "Balden" and "Karen Stipp" also draw readers further into Emma and Abby's past. At the same time, the plot remains necessarily one-sided as Abby never gets the chance to tell her experiences.
I really like the message of this story. How, interestingly, it is only after Abby goes missing that Emma is able to realize how precious Abby was as a friend and subsequently find herself again. The writing only falters at the end, where Weatherly seems desperate to neatly tie up the loose ends of a story that was never clear-cut or neat.
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print
This novel, Weatherly's second, uses Abby's disappearance to tell Emma's story. The novel is told in chapters, one for each day after Abby is reported missing. As the story moves farther away from that day, the focus shifts from wondering what happened to Abby as readers begin to wonder what happened between the two girls. Because at thirteen, they are still girls--a fact that is not always obvious from the narration that seems to sound more like the voice of a seventeen-year-old.
Through a strange coincidence, Emma is the last person to see Abby before she gets off a local bus and vanishes. When Emma has to report everything she remembers about that day to the police she also starts to remember their old friendship. Anger often flares up through the worry Emma shows for Abby. Weatherly handles these conflicting emotions well, her narration making it clear that Abby is missed even while Emma is still angry with her.
Just why Emma is so angry at Abby is not clear until the last half of the story. Her reasons for ending the friendship are revealed in dribs and drabs that interrupt the regular narrative: "Freak. The word slithered into my mind, breaking the spell." Through these fragments readers can piece the girls' back-story together before Emma reveals the finer details.
Weatherly maintains a level of suspense throughout the story as Emma and Abby's friends try to learn what happened to her. Emma's cryptic references to "Balden" and "Karen Stipp" also draw readers further into Emma and Abby's past. At the same time, the plot remains necessarily one-sided as Abby never gets the chance to tell her experiences.
I really like the message of this story. How, interestingly, it is only after Abby goes missing that Emma is able to realize how precious Abby was as a friend and subsequently find herself again. The writing only falters at the end, where Weatherly seems desperate to neatly tie up the loose ends of a story that was never clear-cut or neat.
You can find this review and more on my blog Miss Print
August 25, 2008
Emma hasn't seen Abby for ages, so when she sees Abby on the bus one day, it's weird enough and even more horrible when it turns out the Abby has gone missing and Emma was the last person to see her. Emma then joins the search to find Abby, which forces her to come to terms with her past, her friends and what might have happened to Abby. And, by the time the truth is discovered, it has changed Emma's life forever. This book is well written but there are many parts that may make you cry. Still, it's definitely worth reading.
December 28, 2007
It starts with a missing persons report. Emma is shocked to read in the paper about her former best friend Abby who's gone missing. She's even more shocked to find out that Emma was the last one to see her. As the book's chapters count the days since Abby went missing, we find out more about Emma and why she fell out with Abby. She's hiding some things from her new friends and from her parents... and maybe from herself. As Emma works to find Abby, she is forced to deal with some buried feelings that she thought she wanted to forget.
This is both an intriguing mystery story and a story about finding your true friends and being who you are. Although secondary characters are mostly one-dimensional, the story is really about Emma's transformation and she's a likeable, imperfect heroine.
This is both an intriguing mystery story and a story about finding your true friends and being who you are. Although secondary characters are mostly one-dimensional, the story is really about Emma's transformation and she's a likeable, imperfect heroine.
February 6, 2023
Makes me cry every time
September 5, 2021
I picked this up randomly off a shelf in the teen section of the library because I needed a book to read after finishing the mandatory standardized tests in school. The next day I finished my test, read the entire book and was crying in front of the whole class when the bell rang, with my nose still in the book as I was packing up my stuff trying to get to the very end. Immediately went to Barnes and Noble and bought a copy. I LOVED this book.
And it made me want to play D&D, which I didn't really get the chance to get into until years later but I now love.
I reread it now. It didn't hold up perfectly anymore, which is too bad. I think it resonates with a lot of young teens because they're in that stage where they have to balance their childhood needs to play and imagine with the need to fit in and try to be "cool." A lot of teens also probably have friends they left behind, or who left them behind, either because of dramatic things like Abby and Emma experienced or just because of growing into different people and not clicking. This book really pushes those particular emotional buttons. It's still good as an adult - just didn't hit me the same way. My husband even liked it, and he's REALLY picky about books, and none of the genres this book belongs to are genres he normally likes.
And it made me want to play D&D, which I didn't really get the chance to get into until years later but I now love.
I reread it now. It didn't hold up perfectly anymore, which is too bad. I think it resonates with a lot of young teens because they're in that stage where they have to balance their childhood needs to play and imagine with the need to fit in and try to be "cool." A lot of teens also probably have friends they left behind, or who left them behind, either because of dramatic things like Abby and Emma experienced or just because of growing into different people and not clicking. This book really pushes those particular emotional buttons. It's still good as an adult - just didn't hit me the same way. My husband even liked it, and he's REALLY picky about books, and none of the genres this book belongs to are genres he normally likes.
March 19, 2012
Another YA book that I was all bored with/meh about until about halfway through - then the mystery grabbed me. It was probably a 3.5 for me, if we could give half stars. The story of a teen girl who runs into her former best friend one day on a bus - they talk briefly, and then part ways as she gets off on her stop. The next day she learns that her friend never made it to her destination, and is now missing. The story follows her as she comes to terms with some of the reasons that their friendship broke apart, learns more about who she really is, and joins Abby's friends to figure out where Abby is and what happened.
March 2, 2008
i loved this book a lot. a girl named abby goes missing right after she talks to a former friend, emma. after 14 days emma finds her dead in a basement of an old building they used to play in when they were little.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 12, 2008
From this book,I learned that there is more than meets the eye in people and that,if a friend seems like they were going to do something potentially dangerous,try your best to at least let someone come along with them wherever they go,so if they do get hurt,they can either be notified of or helped.
September 6, 2007
I really liked this book, Well the end was actually rather shocking... people who have patients, and love mystery books should really read it. i really recommened it.
January 6, 2008
I haven't read a "young adult" book for a while - this one was great! Kept me guessing till the very end.
September 30, 2019
Such a good book for young teens.
September 16, 2018
I assume this is set somewhere in England, based on the author's bio. It's written from the perspective of Emma, a 13 (or possibly 14?) year old girl who realizes that she was likely the last person to see her former best friend Abby before she disappeared. She reports their encounter to the police and is forced to think about a time in her life that she thought she'd left behind and that she desperately hopes no one at her new school will ever find out about. Although a part of her wants to try to continue with her life as normally as possible, she can't stop thinking and worrying about Abby, Abby's last words, and the events that eventually drove them apart.
This was aimed a bit younger than the YA I normally read, and some of my issues with it stemmed from the fact that I was too old for this book - definitely not the book's fault. Emma was concerned with how others viewed her in a way that made perfect sense for her age and experiences but that I found extremely frustrating. For example, back when she was friends with Abby, Emma loved sci-fi, fantasy, writing stories, and playing make-believe games in which she and Abby were adventurers fighting against an evil witch named Esmerelda. Some horrible bullying eventually led to her cutting herself off from Abby and attempting to completely remake herself, right down to her hobbies and interests (this isn't a spoiler - it comes up pretty early on). It struck me as a huge and emotionally draining amount of work for something that seemed likely to cause a new set of problems later on.
Although Emma's actions and thoughts often frustrated me, I could see where she was coming from. Every time she considered taking the route I wanted her to take - talking to an adult about her plans to find Abby, talking to her friends about the bullying she went through - something came up that made that route seem, to Emma, potentially more dangerous and/or difficult than the alternative.
This was a more realistic take on a "missing persons" mystery than I was expecting. Emma wasn't smarter than the cops, although she had knowledge, through her past connection with Abby, that turned out to be helpful. Also, there were no 13-year-olds battling adults in adrenaline-fueled climactic moments - instead, Emma mostly battled her own emotions and the reactions of some of Abby's friends.
I appreciated the scene between Emma and her friends near the end, and I liked the way the relationship between Emma and Abby's friends progressed, once I got past Emma and Sheila's horrifically awful first encounters. Unfortunately, one sore spot for me was the way Weatherly wrote about counseling. It wasn't so much Emma's reaction to the idea of it - horror and anger that her family thought worrying about Abby was crazy - but rather that her reaction was never really challenged. One character told Emma that she'd been to counseling before and that it wasn't what Emma thought. In the end, however, Emma's dad decided that it'd be better to just talk and listen as a family more. Readers were never shown that Emma's ideas about counseling were false.
All in all, this was pretty good, if occasionally frustrating and exhausting from an adult perspective. I did wonder how dated certain aspects were, though. This was originally published in 2004. The parental controls on Emma's internet seemed to be extremely strict - at one point, she mentioned that there was really only one site that she could go to that at all interested her. And is it still believable for that many parents and teens to be weirded out by teens who play Dungeons & Dragons and like sci-fi and fantasy?
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
This was aimed a bit younger than the YA I normally read, and some of my issues with it stemmed from the fact that I was too old for this book - definitely not the book's fault. Emma was concerned with how others viewed her in a way that made perfect sense for her age and experiences but that I found extremely frustrating. For example, back when she was friends with Abby, Emma loved sci-fi, fantasy, writing stories, and playing make-believe games in which she and Abby were adventurers fighting against an evil witch named Esmerelda. Some horrible bullying eventually led to her cutting herself off from Abby and attempting to completely remake herself, right down to her hobbies and interests (this isn't a spoiler - it comes up pretty early on). It struck me as a huge and emotionally draining amount of work for something that seemed likely to cause a new set of problems later on.
Although Emma's actions and thoughts often frustrated me, I could see where she was coming from. Every time she considered taking the route I wanted her to take - talking to an adult about her plans to find Abby, talking to her friends about the bullying she went through - something came up that made that route seem, to Emma, potentially more dangerous and/or difficult than the alternative.
This was a more realistic take on a "missing persons" mystery than I was expecting. Emma wasn't smarter than the cops, although she had knowledge, through her past connection with Abby, that turned out to be helpful. Also, there were no 13-year-olds battling adults in adrenaline-fueled climactic moments - instead, Emma mostly battled her own emotions and the reactions of some of Abby's friends.
I appreciated the scene between Emma and her friends near the end, and I liked the way the relationship between Emma and Abby's friends progressed, once I got past Emma and Sheila's horrifically awful first encounters. Unfortunately, one sore spot for me was the way Weatherly wrote about counseling. It wasn't so much Emma's reaction to the idea of it - horror and anger that her family thought worrying about Abby was crazy - but rather that her reaction was never really challenged. One character told Emma that she'd been to counseling before and that it wasn't what Emma thought. In the end, however, Emma's dad decided that it'd be better to just talk and listen as a family more. Readers were never shown that Emma's ideas about counseling were false.
All in all, this was pretty good, if occasionally frustrating and exhausting from an adult perspective. I did wonder how dated certain aspects were, though. This was originally published in 2004. The parental controls on Emma's internet seemed to be extremely strict - at one point, she mentioned that there was really only one site that she could go to that at all interested her. And is it still believable for that many parents and teens to be weirded out by teens who play Dungeons & Dragons and like sci-fi and fantasy?
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
Read
May 6, 2023This book reads a little young for me. Missing Abby reads like a bridge book between middle grades and YA. It is clean, except for one or two cuss words and a couple of bullying scenes. Since I am not the target audience for the book, I will forgo giving it a star rating. Fourth grade/fifth grade me would have enjoyed this novel.
I would like to recommend this book, however, especially to tween girls who don't feel like they fit in. The protagonist starts off a bit unlikable, but that is intentional. She is reinventing herself after enduring a year of horrific bullying. The central message of the book is to be true to yourself and to others. I liked the ending, and I suspect that the ending would be different (no spoilers) had the writer been writing for an American audience instead of a UK audience.
I would like to recommend this book, however, especially to tween girls who don't feel like they fit in. The protagonist starts off a bit unlikable, but that is intentional. She is reinventing herself after enduring a year of horrific bullying. The central message of the book is to be true to yourself and to others. I liked the ending, and I suspect that the ending would be different (no spoilers) had the writer been writing for an American audience instead of a UK audience.
February 5, 2017
Emma sees her ex best friend Abby for the first time in a year, just hours before Abby goes missing. Desperate to find out what happened to her, and also keep her past troubles with bullies a secret from her new school and new friends, Emma teams up with Abby's new friends to try and discover what happened. A good young YA book centred on friendship and fitting in while also packing a punch with the missing child storyline. Some hard hitting themes such as bullying are woven through the book and provide an accurate and well portrayed glimpse into the life of a pre-teen girl who is not treated well by her peers. Read a more detailed review of my thoughts at https://secretsofthestudentlife.wordp...
January 24, 2021
I was choking up reading this book, which makes it the second Lee Weatherly book that had me choking up (the first one being Child X), so either I'm getting real soft in my old age, or I'm due for some emotional regulation therapy, or what -- but it was a choker.
Despite all the characters being young teenagers (a movement I was unable to relate to even when I was that age), the stories are still compelling because there is always a "realness" to the plot. Think of a news story that you stumble across, one of those that just jumps out at you every once in a while and you become inexplicably fixated with it; following its progression with a strange feeling of intrigue, sympathy, wariness and hope. That's what Lee Weatherly's book feel like to me.
Despite all the characters being young teenagers (a movement I was unable to relate to even when I was that age), the stories are still compelling because there is always a "realness" to the plot. Think of a news story that you stumble across, one of those that just jumps out at you every once in a while and you become inexplicably fixated with it; following its progression with a strange feeling of intrigue, sympathy, wariness and hope. That's what Lee Weatherly's book feel like to me.
May 13, 2023
No matter how many times I read this book, it has always been amazing. You're left wondering the whole time whats happened and when you finally know... well, it quite literally reduced me to tears every time. It's such a beautiful book about understanding to love yourself despite others not accepting it themselves. It captures very well how a teen would think, in my opinion, because I could relate to the way Emma thought and reacted to certain situations from when i was a teenager. Lee Weatherly definitely knows how to write!
January 9, 2017
This really wasn't my favorite book. Emma bumps into Abby, an old friend from a previous school, riding the bus one day. Then Abby is missing. And Emma was the last person to have seen her. The book is her day-to-day struggle of each day Abby is missing. Emma revisits painful memories, meets new friends, searches for Abby, and confronts her past.
March 1, 2023
I am not the intended audience. I am a 25 year old man who has not been in his teens for years. This book captures the mental torture teens and the rest of humanity put themselves through as they grapple with guilt and belonging. I find myself both frustrated and symphonizing with the lead as she gets pummeled by one messed situation after another.
May 21, 2018
i read this book years and years ago, and figured id reread it! it still stands up, its better than i expected for it to be. 3.5 !! also, the author is from my city, which is how i came to find it again.
July 2, 2023
So incredibly nostalgic for me, it felt like I was right back in my childhood of imagination and magic. This is a beautiful, underrated book that deserves so much love and I hope more people will read it.
August 4, 2017
Such a beautifully written book.
My emotions were all over the place by the time I finished reading (in a good way) and quite easily one of my most favorite books so far.
My emotions were all over the place by the time I finished reading (in a good way) and quite easily one of my most favorite books so far.
February 11, 2018
Review to come
July 3, 2019
I love this book!
March 22, 2020
Got this book from a warehouse sale when I was around 12 and it became my favourite book. Have read it countless times.
January 20, 2023
I read this a very long time ago and I’ve been searching for the title for years!!!! Finally found it and read it again 🎉🎉
June 8, 2023
This book made me want to try D&D back in high school- the days of 3.5e.
August 30, 2025
I remember LOVING this book when I was in 7th grade, so I picked it back up to see if it stood the test of time. I was just as engrossed as I was as a kid. <3
October 19, 2021
A amazing book about a girl who’s former best friend goes missing. Emma resurfaces her old self and it made me think. I had a friend like Abby when I was younger. I ditched her like years ago. To I guess fit in. Now I can’t change our friendship now. But I did find my old mythical books and stuff, currently looking through them. If that’s you, find your old self. They might be cooler than you realize.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews