The Reappearance of Rachel Price

Holly Jackson’s The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024) is a young adult novel which tells the story of the reappearance of a woman who had been presumed dead—Rachel Price. The novel is narrated from the point of view of Rachel’s 16-year-old daughter, Bel Price, who starts to believe that there is something amiss in her mother’s story of her disappearance and reappearance. Bel begins investigating the facts of the case and makes startling revelations about her family. Jackson is the best-selling author of the young adult mystery thriller A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019), which later became a trilogy.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Random House e-book edition.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of domestic abuse, violence, imprisonment, psychological abuse, and murder.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with Bel Price giving an interview for the documentary about her mother Rachel’s disappearance. Directed by Ramsay with the assistance of his brother, Ash, the documentary is to be titled The Disappearance of Rachel Price. Bel confesses that she has no idea what happened to her mother. Sixteen years earlier, when Bel was two years old, she was found abandoned in her mother’s car.