Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Scarlett Crosby was held captive and tortured for almost three months by a man named Tanner. Trapped with her was another young woman named Della, who was also the person who’d lured Scarlett into Tanner’s van in an effort to save herself.

When Scarlett was given a similar task to lure another girl into their prison, she instead warned Tiffany away. On the drive back to Tanner’s home, Scarlett managed to escape, Tanner was killed by a cop, and the cops came to his home to find it burned down and Della vanished without a trace.

Ten years later, Scarlett is a successful artist who’s tried, and failed, multiple times to get her memory of Della onto canvas. She’s had so many false sightings of Della over the years that the police now firmly believe Della never actually existed. And yet this time, Scarlett is certain that a woman who keeps showing up actually is the real Della. Why is she back? What does she want? And can Scarlett actually trust her own instincts this time around?

Another Girl Lost is a gripping and page-turning psychological thriller. From the very first chapter, we see Scarlett through the perspective of Detective Kevin Dawson, the cop who’d killed Tanner and rescued Scarlett a decade ago. Except this time, he’s come to arrest her. Because Scarlett has “likely killed one woman and been caught trying to kill another.” She’s also “viciously attacked the arresting officer,” [page 2] a detective named Margo whom Scarlett keeps insisting is actually Della.

Lawson’s decision to begin the book from Dawson’s perspective is really smart. Because it sets up the possibility that Scarlett’s an unreliable narrator, no matter how sympathetic we find her character and perspective later on. And true enough, even when we do get into Scarlett’s mind, beginning from two weeks before her arrest, we see how uncertain she herself is about her sightings of Della, and how much trauma she’s still working through from her days of captivity.

Scarlett’s chapters also give us a glimpse of the horrors she endured as Tanner’s prisoner (though thankfully without a lot of detail), and the complex hate/need relationship she has with Della. We see how Della suffers with Scarlett, but we also see how much more freedom Della enjoys than Scarlett, and how active a role she takes in shaping Scarlett’s perception of reality. So when Scarlett tells us that detectives think she may have made Della up as a coping mechanism, it’s hard to discount that possibility completely. And if Della is potentially a figment of Scarlett’s imagination, then perhaps her fears of seeing her being a sign of a mental break isn’t too far off the mark.

On the flip side, we also see the complexities of Detective Dawson’s character in his chapters. His life kinda sucks, and he’s immediately flattered by Margo’s obvious interest in him, and devil-may-care attitude that HR may frown on co-workers sleeping together. As his chapters intertwine with Scarlett’s, it’s eerie to see how similar Margo’s skill at getting under Detective Dawson’s skin is to Della’s skill at getting under Scarlett’s skin. Or so it seems. Could it just be that Scarlett’s paranoia is rubbing off on us?

There’s no easy answer, and Burton does a masterful job at keeping us off-balance and second-guessing ourselves right up till fairly late in the novel. And even when the actual truth starts becoming clear, the very final chapter shows a character doing something that forces us to consider, is justice being done? And once again, as is the mark of Burton’s mastery of this form, there’s no easy answer.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.