A Place Called Here (Cecelia Ahern)**

Not another therapy story! This time it’s Sandy – a tall, brunette named Sandy Shortt: is it just me who didn’t find that funny? – who sees the school counsellor about her obsessive habit of looking for everything she’s lost. Of course, Sandy is so wonderful, the counsellor ends up falling in love with her, and, once she’s left school, she ends up ‘seeing’ him in a completely different sense. I prefer Sandy and Gregory to Tasia and Louise in Straight Talking, but it still doesn’t quite work because there doesn’t seem to be any point to it.

As usual, Cecelia Ahern has had a wonderful idea for a story: that all missing things and people go to another world, and that’s why some things will just never be found, like my copy of Rubber Rabbit. Sandy became interested in missing people as a child when the school bully Jenny-May went missing. As an adult, Sandy runs a missing persons agency. But there are some people who can’t be found – until Sandy suddenly ends up in the missing persons world herself.

We’ve all heard a lot about children going missing lately. One thing I really did like about this book was that Jenny-May wasn’t made out to be perfect. She wasn’t a nice person at all, and I respect Sandy for being able to admit that. I also respect Ahern for not making Jenny-May into the cutest little girl who ever existed. When kids go missing, it annoys me so much when people go on about how they must be found because they’re so beautiful, friendly, intelligent etc. So, if they are ugly, anti-social and stupid we shouldn’t look for then? Of course we should. Don’t look for them because they’re cute. Look for them because they’re someone’s baby.

Jenny-May was a bitch. She was horrible to Sandy. But she was still someone’s baby and Sandy still wanted to find her.

Unfortunately, this is Sandy’s only redeeming characteristic. I do sympathise with Sandy’s need to get away from people, and to spend most of her time on her own, but I’m sure it would have been possible for Ahern to make her seem a bit nicer. She doesn’t seem to care about anyone except herself and the missing people.

The book has some great moments. Some of it’s funny. But some parts just don’t work. Like when Sandy, on arriving in the missing persons world, pretends she runs an acting agency instead of a missing persons agency. This was to give her the chance to meet people she’s searched for, and tell them about their families during their ‘audition’, without them knowing her real job. When she suddenly finds herself putting on a play, it’s the perfect opportunity for her to learn something about the value of human companionship. But Sandy mostly pretends the play doesn’t exist. She’s not interested, so she lets everyone else do the work. Total unfairness. It’s very easy to lose interest in her after that.