A good story with a huge twist. In the beginning I thought it was going to be a twee love story but as the plot unfolds it gets darker. An enjoyable read and for those that love murder mystery hang in there as it is worth it!

You Don’t Know Me is the sixth novel by British-born Australian author, Sara Foster. When Noah Carruso first sees Alice Pryce on the deck of a river taxi in Thailand, he feels like he’s seen a ghost. Her long red hair reminds him so much of Lizzie Burdett, but Lizzie has been missing twelve years. At fifteen, Noah had an enormous crush on his brother, Tom’s girlfriend, but the last time he saw Lizzie she was distraught and walking away. There has been no sign of her, dead or alive, since then.

Fascinated, Noah follows Alice. It turns out that she is teaching English in Thailand, although that’s not the real reason she’s there, but sharing that secret with this attractive Aussie from Sydney’s Northern Beaches is not going to happen. Nonetheless, there is a mutual attraction, to which they soon can’t help but succumb. It rather too quickly starts to feel like the real thing: love.

Noah wants to stay longer, but his parents are hassling him to return to his job managing the family restaurant: the strain on his injured father is telling. And he has to be home for the upcoming inquest into Lizzie’s disappearance. Facing his brother, after Tom’s absence of eleven years, is something he dreads. Avoiding journalist Rachel Lawrence, the tenacious author of the current podcast about Lizzie, is also a priority.

Noah is missing Alice, but she has problems of her own, a situation that forces her back to Australia when it’s the last thing she wants to do. She can’t imagine how Noah would react to the secrets and trauma and guilt and shame she holds. But Noah hasn’t been entirely honest with Alice either.

A twin narrative (Noah and Alice alternating chapters) tells the story with the podcast transcript used as a (quite topical) device for providing background information about Lizzie’s disappearance. Foster deftly demonstrates the mixed power of the media: the podcast alerts potential witnesses to offer up possible evidence, but also incites mischief and malice from certain members of the public.

Foster’s sixth novel is very cleverly plotted: there are numerous red herrings and several parties try to shift suspicion away from themselves by implicating others. The agent of Lizzie’s ultimate fate is unlikely to be on the radar of even the most astute reader. This would be a five-star read but for one essential detail about the likely actions of a seventeen-year-old girl that stretches the reader’s credibility a bit too far. Still an excellent piece of Australian crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Better Reading Preview and Simon&Schuster Australia