🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.3/5 | Steam: 🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Before She Disappeared yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Frankie Elkin moves to a new city, gets a bartending job, and finds a missing person no one else is looking for anymore. That’s it. That’s her whole life. She’s a former alcoholic with no permanent address and no agenda beyond this one thing she knows how to do: dig until she finds answers. I didn’t know what to expect going in, but I was hooked by this premise from the start — and by Frankie herself.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
Meet Frankie
Frankie Elkin is not your typical missing persons investigator. There’s no badge, no agency, no funding. She picks a case, moves to the town, bartends for money, and just… starts asking questions. When we meet her, she’s in Mattapan, eleven months after sixteen-year-old Angelique Lovelie Badeau, known as Lele, went missing. The police have basically moved on. The community hasn’t. And Frankie isn’t going anywhere.
She’s cunning and creative and, as I found myself noting more than once, incredibly self-destructive. There’s something deeply compelling about a protagonist who will put herself in harm’s way not for glory or money, but because she needs to know. Because she feels like she owes something to the world — though it takes a while before we start to understand why.
The Case
Angelique’s family is everything. Aunt Guerline is holding things together with sheer willpower, and her younger brother Emmanuel is desperate for answers. Frankie embeds herself in the neighborhood, earns the community’s trust one conversation at a time, and starts noticing things the police apparently missed.
The cash hidden in the lamp: twelve thousand dollars. A sixteen-year-old girl does not just have twelve thousand dollars without a reason. Angelique on camera buying a burner phone days before she disappeared. An encoded “help us” message buried in a school assignment she uploaded. And then a second missing girl nobody’s talking about — Lydia — whose family actively does not want the police involved.
Detective Latham is not pleased with any of this. He’s been assigned to Angelique’s case and here comes this woman who’s been in the neighborhood for two days cracking leads his department hasn’t touched in months. I have to say, his annoyance is delicious. You can feel how much it bothers him that she’s right, and his grudging respect for her builds in a way that keeps you watching that dynamic the whole way through.
The Truth About Angelique
When Frankie and Latham finally pull the security tapes, everything shifts. The day Angelique went missing, she and Lydia had switched places. The real target was Lydia. Not Angelique. Angelique walked into a situation that was never meant for her.
Here’s how it unraveled: Margolie — Angelique’s friend — had a much older boyfriend from the summer camp who gave her a fake ID to get into bars, slept with her, then asked her to bring a friend. Turns out he was a V-card collector. She brought Angelique. And Angelique, bold and fearless, looked at those fake IDs and called the whole thing out. Publicly. Loudly. In front of everyone. Then Lydia joined in, picking apart every technical flaw she could spot.
Which, as it turns out, was exactly the wrong moment to show she knew too much about how to spot a bad fake ID.
The Fake ID Ring
Lydia had a secret older brother, JJ, who had suggested she use her skills to make fake IDs and turn a profit. He was distributing them up the chain until someone above him demanded he produce his supplier. To protect Lydia, he sent Angelique instead. And they never let Angelique leave that first meeting.
By the time Frankie tracks down Angelique’s friend Margolie, she breaks down immediately. She’d been carrying the guilt, convinced this was all because Angelique had confronted the boyfriend that day. She wasn’t entirely wrong about the chain of events, but she was missing the bigger, darker picture.
They find Lydia’s body. She’s dead. The case just got a lot worse.
The Man Running the Center
Frederic runs the community center. Supposed to be a role model, a safe space. A place for neighborhood kids to grow and thrive. Instead, he’s been running a drug operation for over twenty years using the center as a front, recruiting low-level dealers from the kids who come through, and keeping Angelique and Lydia in a nearby townhouse where they’d make trips to use the 3D printer for the fake IDs.
When Lydia deteriorated and became a liability, Frederic killed her. He also killed JJ, Lydia’s brother for getting involved. He killed Deek — Lydia’s secret older brother — for getting involved too. And they were going to kill Emmanuel next. This man presented himself as someone protecting his community while actively preying on it. I just don’t know what kind of person does that. I genuinely cannot.
The Rescue
Emmanuel gets taken. Frankie ducks out the back of a building and finds Deek barely alive, and he tells her where to find them. Everything is happening at the center. And Frankie, being Frankie, decides her plan is to get Frederic to shoot her so that Angelique has a window to grab a baseball bat and fight back.
That’s the plan. Get shot on purpose.
She does. A couple of times. Then the police arrive and it’s over. Angelique and Emmanuel are safe. The cost: multiple lives, including people who were trying to protect the girls they loved.
And somewhere in the chaos, Frankie’s mind keeps drifting back to Paul. Someone from ten years ago who got shot in a robbery because Frankie refused to hand over her wallet — she didn’t have any money. Paul died saying he loved Amy. Was he her boyfriend? Her sponsor? Married to someone else? I took a lot of notes on Paul and they are basically one long question mark. I think that’s the point. There’s clearly more to Frankie’s past and I assume it unravels further across the series.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥 — No steam here at all. This is straight mystery/thriller territory. There’s some tension between Frankie and Latham but it stays firmly in “charged glances” territory. If you’re coming for romance, look elsewhere. If you’re coming for a good puzzle and a fascinating lead character, you’re exactly where you need to be.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied, mostly. The resolution was a lot to untangle at the end — there are moving pieces everywhere and the connections between Lydia’s brother, the fake ID ring, Frederic’s operation, and everything that happened to Angelique as collateral damage took some mental work. But once it clicked, it really clicked. The emotional weight of Angelique being saved while Lydia is gone, while all these brothers who tried to help are dead, sat with me.
And then Frankie moves on. To the next case. To the next city. Lisa Gardner doesn’t soften that at all, and I respected it.
Would I Relisten?
No. It’s a great listen but not a relisten for me personally. The slow build and the layered middle make it more of a one-time investment. That said, I absolutely want to see where this series goes.
Who Is This For
If you love a mystery with real depth, a lead character who’s unlike anyone else you’ve read, and a story that takes its time to honor the community it’s set in, this one is for you. Lisa Gardner did something thoughtful here with Mattapan — the culture, the families, the way these communities get overlooked when their kids go missing. It adds layers that make Angelique’s disappearance feel even more urgent. This is not a beach read. It’s a settle-in-and-pay-attention read, and it’s worth it.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon CA | Amazon US | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible CA | Audible US | Libro.fm
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📚 More from the Frankie Elkin Series
- Book 1 — Before She Disappeared | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.3/5 | Steam: 🔥 — You’re here!
- Book 2 — One Step Too Far | Reviewed by LD | Coming Soon
- Book 3 — Still See You Everywhere | Reviewed by LD | Coming Soon
- Book 4 — Kiss Her Goodbye | Reviewed by LD | Coming Soon
- Full Series Review — Is the Frankie Elkin Series Worth Reading? — Coming Soon
Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Series: Frankie Elkin Series Book 1 | Genre: Mystery/Thriller | Steam: 🔥
Ready for more from LD? Find them here