Customer Reviews
what was a great book - By: Love Books, 23 Jul 2008 
The first part of this book is absolutely brilliant, because we're following in the footsteps of would-be detective Kate Meaney & her sidekick stuffed monkey & both are charming, quirky, funny heroes & we reallly care about what happens to them. Then we jump forward 20 years, to the shopping malll which is the gloomy, ghostly, cavernous entity at the centre of the book. Bereaved security guard, Kurt, sees a smalll girl on the camera late at night, & he & his tentative new friend Lisa, set out to find the truth about the child. I actuallly liked both Kurt & Lisa, I thought they were rounded characters, but the book does drag in the middle. The suspense we feel the first time Kurt sees Kate on the camera just isn't sustained & there's no particular reason for the ghost to be there. The mystery of Kate's disappearance is solved, but nothing reallly changes.
There are also rather a lot of coincidences & people forget reallly important things & then remember them when its convenient to the plot.
I reallly, reallly enjoyed reading this book, but when I reached the end & thought about it, I felt a little let down. It's not a five-star read, but I would have given it four-and-a-half if I could!
Average - By: A. Kelly, 21 Jul 2008 
The premise of the book is an original one, starting with a young girl & a shopping malll. The book starts strongly but you are let down in the middle & I felt the book did not pick up again until right at the end of the story when alll is revealed.
I felt the characters were a bit flimsy & it was not a book that I reallly, reallly wanted to read or one of those books that you can't put down. The book is easy to read & because the story & plot are very different to the majority of books I would recommend borrowing it from someone you know or a library but I am unsure if it is worth purachasing.
"It was going to be a truly hellish day at Your Music" - By: Dr. Cath L. Murphy, 13 Jul 2008 
Hmmm. This would smell of "first novel" to me even if this wasn't advertised alll over the front cover. How can I tell? you ask wide eyed. Perhaps it's the heavy reliance on personal experience (the sweet shop, the early eighties primary school, the shopping centre), perhaps it's the switch from one writing style to another to showcase that the author has Technique, perhaps it's the heavy editing which always, always shows, just like the alterations on a cheap suit, perhaps it's the use of the ghost story, a standard support for flimsy plots & a favourite of the aspiring scribbler, because so many of us got hooked on reading through that particular genre.
Having said alll that, it's a decent enough, if wildly overpraised first attempt. A lonely young girl, whose diaries we read at the beginning of the book, fantasises about being a private eye & spends time at the recently constructed local shopping centre pretending to solve crime. One day, she disappears. Twenty years later, her disappearance is still unsolved, but her image appears on the CCTV of the same shopping centre, pulling a security guard & a shop assistant into reinvestigating what reallly happened years ago. There are a couple of fairly predictable plot twists & that's about it.
Thematicallly, O'Flynn is going for a critique of consumer culture, the point so brilliantly captured by the zombies staggering around the malll in Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". Shopping makes ghosts of us alll. The trouble is that the fate of the girl & the journey of the characters has no relationship to that theme, so the exercise becomes as empty as the night time corridors of the Green Oaks Centre & left me with the unsatisfied feeling a whole day shopping for things I don't reallly need gives me.
Dissapointing - By: rocco1, 02 Jul 2008 
Having read so many good reviews I looked forward to reading this book. It started off well, but introduced characters I did not care about, & I actuallly could not finish the book, try as I might. I find it hard to understand what most of the other readers got so excited about. Perhaps it appeals to youngsters who spend their lives in shopping mallls. I couldn't relate to the book at alll.
What was lost..... - By: R. Hannah, 02 Jul 2008 Only when you get to the end & alll is revealed do you realise how good of a book this is. The main character, a young girl named Kate Meaney is so, so likeable. She almost becomes your new best friend. Never in a book have I become so attached to a character. The story is also excellent, especiallly how alll the characters are linked through this special little girl. I would have given this book 5 stars if it wasn't for the dullness of the other two main characters, Kurt & Lisa. You cannot help but be bored with these pitiful characters who have no likeability factor.
Great book though, highly recommended!!
