There's an urban legend in Briar Glen. When young Lucy Gallows found a road in the woods and followed it, she and the road disappeared. She was never seen again, and now she haunts the forest...
It's 2017, and Sara has been the weird loner at school ever since her sister disappeared one year ago. The official story is that Becca ran off with her boyfriend, but Sara knows the truth. Becca had gone into the woods searching for Lucy's ghost. Unable to give up on her sister, and irritated that the world moved on without her, Sara has become distant from her family and friends.
But on the anniversary of Becca's disappearance, a text message goes out to the entire school, inviting the kids to "play the game" - to go into the woods and find Lucy.
Sara knows this may be her only chance to follow Becca and learn what really happened to her.
Armed with a book of Becca's notes and her previously estranged friends, Sara finds the road into the woods. Becca's journal cryptically describes trials along the way...gates...and a reward for those who pass them all...
Rules for Vanishing is a haunting, slow build suspense novel but I was originally worried that the book's format may be jarring for me to read. The story is told both with regular chapters (Sara's first person account), as well as interview and video transcripts from the investigation in the months following that fateful night. Turns out, the author has used this method with nothing but success, making the transitions relevant to the story rather than just a stylistic choice.
Due to the nature of horror stories and some instances of the language one might expect from characters trapped in a haunted forest, this book is clearly aimed at the older YA audience, but adult readers will definitely see the appeal in it as well. I will be the first to admit I do very poorly with horror stories, and thus rarely choose them, but I am glad I picked up Rules for Vanishing. Kate Alice Marshall delivers a deeply unsettling story that was both gripping and unpredictable.