“A missing girl. Decades of silence. A secret too big to bury.

1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they’re saying.

It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions. 2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery.

As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished and was never missed because no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight. Her trail could lead right to Katherine’s door.

In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten.”

Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to share my review of Lowbridge by Lucy Campbell. Lowbridge was published by Ultimo Press on 6th July 2023 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats. I chose to read a free ARC of Lowbridge but that has in no way influenced my review. My grateful thanks to the team at ED PR for sending me a proof copy.

I adore Australian crime and mystery fiction with a bit of a passion. For the last few years, I’ve devoured every crime fiction novel set in Australia I can get my hands on. And I can’t see my fandom wavering anytime soon (currently reading an Aussie police procedural and loving it!). So I was more than delighted to receive a copy of Lowbridge by debut author Lucy Campbell in the post. A missing girl, a small Australian town where everyone knows your business but no one can recall what happened that fateful day back in 1987. I couldn’t wait to get stuck in!

And what a cracking read Lowbridge is. Katherine and her husband, Jamie, have recently moved to Lowbridge following a devastating tragedy. They’ve returned to Jamie’s hometown to achieve the impossible; to continue grieving, start healing, and to gently soften all reminders of what they had before. Katherine is understandably depressed and very much alone in a town where her husband has a past and old friends. Before long she secretly turns to booze and pills to get her through the day. She’s a desperate woman who knows she’s on a rapid downwards spiral to destruction, so makes the decision to change, physically forcing herself out of the house and getting to know her new surroundings. On one such trip out she meets Margaret and discovers the Lowbridge Historical Society who are in desperate need of help cataloguing boxes of papers and brochures going back decades. Katherine agrees to help and on sorting through a box, discovers a teenage girl went missing from Lowbridge in the late 80s. In a small town where everyone knows your business, how can a teenager just vanish? Katherine is determined to find out…

Lowbridge is a very well-written, character-driven mystery with a well-paced, slow burn plot and a cast of interesting characters. Told in the past before Tess’s disappearance and in the present from Katherine’s point of view, this dual timeline mystery was both engaging and compelling. The author has created a wonderful sense of place with Lowbridge. You really get that small town feel where everyone knows everyone else. But it’s a town where, in the late 1980s, around the time Tess disappeared, tensions were high. Luisa, Sim and Tess are three best friends who couldn’t be more different. Sim’s absent parents – Dr Patricia Horton and Angus Grogan – throw money at their daughter in order to make up for the fact they’re never home, never there for Sim. Dr Horton is in the process of opening a Women’s Centre in the town, a fact which has divided the town in two. Some passionately support the centre, others are vehemently against it. It’s a time of change for the small town and its community, and not everyone appreciates that. I thought the way the author created a building sense of tension throughout the novel was done incredibly well.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Lowbridge is an intriguing mystery with good characterisation and a well-written, slow burn plot. I thought the author did an excellent job of drawing the reader’s attention to the social divide present between the two missing girls. I also enjoyed how well the tension around the Women’s Centre was portrayed. There’s something so appealing about a small town mystery, particularly when there are secrets galore for the reader to discover along the way! All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this captivating mystery with its claustrophobic feel and dual timeline. Full of well-written suspense, an engaging storyline and the author puts the characters front and centre. I very much look forward to reading more from this author in the future. Recommended.

I chose to read and review a free ARC of Lowbridge. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

Lowbridge by Lucy Campbell was published in the UK by Ultimo Press on 6th July 2023 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | Waterstones | Foyles | bookshop.org | Goodreads | damppebbles bookshop.org shop | damppebbles amazon.co.uk shop | damppebbles amazon.com shop |

Lucy Campbell has worked as a writer and sub-editor across magazines, newspapers and non-fiction books. Lowbridge is her first novel. She lives in Canberra with her husband and three children.