In this exclusive piece for easons.com, we are thrilled to have Sophie McKenzie share a personal introduction to her brand new book, Hide and Secrets and her inspiration writing it. 

 

A missing father. A troubled teen. A dangerous enemy. These are just some of the ingredients in my new novel, Hide and Secrets.

 

In many ways, this new bookshares a lot of DNA with my first teen thriller, Girl, Missing: An ordinary girl who doesn’t fit in, is launched into a world of action and danger as she tries to find out the truth about her family. The stakes are high - and getting higher – from the start.

 

Cat’s father went missing almost 18 months ago and has officially been declared dead. This has left Cat’s family fractured, each member grieving in their own way. For Cat the situation is made worse because at school nobody knows how to relate to her anymore. Alone and isolated, Cat is facing a dull, friendless summer holiday. And then a mysterious stranger contacts her, claiming her dad is alive and in hiding, wrongly accused of a crime by a local gang.

 

The gang are on Dad’s trail and Cat faces a desperate race against time to find him and warn him, before it’s too late. She’s joined on this perilous mission by her friend Tyler, recently moved in nearby – a boy who Cat is strongly drawn to, but who doesn’t appear to see her as more than a friend…

 

A lot of the material in Hide and Secrets arose from seeds of ideas that I’ve had for years, but ultimately the book was inspired by my love of stories, in particular stories with high stakes and compelling characters. I don’t want to be slowed down by lots of lingering descriptions; I want to feel desperate to find out what happens next. That’s what I love to read and, in Hide and Secrets, that’s what I’ve tried to write.