Evie, a 13-year-old girl, disappears. Lizzie, her best friend and next-door neighbour, is confused, frightened and believes she is the only one who can help. She thinks she knows something about Evie’s disappearance, but she can’t quite remember what that might be. What follows is an unsettling, prickly and intense read. Megan Abbott (in this, her sixth crime novel) is, as the blurb says, mining the same terrain as The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones. We are in the world of burgeoning teenage sexuality, sexual vulnerability and paedophilia.

The End of Everything is told by Lizzie, and in her desperate attempts to gain attention from Evie’s father, to rescue her absent friend and to believe that it is love, not something darker, that drives Evie’s captor, we see a girl on the verge of adulthood, grasping onto her innocence while realising that nothing will ever be the same again. Abbott creates her 1980s Mid-West American world of teenagers with great detail and nuance. In this world, girls wear love and affection bestowed like medals, teenagers believe they can control the world, and the first feelings of sexual desire are fascinating. In this mess of girls, sisters, friends, mothers and lovers, Abbott maintains the tension and I found it hard to put down, reading it in one sitting.

But I’m still not sure I ‘liked’ this book. Primarily, it made me question the author’s intention – something I don’t think I should think about at the end of a novel. I was left with a feeling of distinct unease. Unease particularly about the depiction of the father and daughter relationships, and how manipulative or pervasive is the authorial gaze that sees potential for abuse in all female/male relationships.

Pip Newling is a freelance writer who works at Readings Hawthorn