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. Now, Bel secretly steals a chess piece from the board in front of her; she has a habit of stealing and hoarding things. Charlie, Bel’s father, comes to pick her up. They have an altercation with Rachel’s mother, Susan, who believes that Charlie is responsible for Rachel’s murder. In the parking lot, Bel insists on sitting in the front seat because she does not like sitting in the back seat.

The next day, Bel walks to school with her beloved cousin, Carter. After school, the whole family is filmed for the documentary as they watch home videos of Rachel. The Price family includes Carter’s parents, Jeff and Sherry, as well as Jeff and Charlie’s father, Patrick. When one scene of the documentary features an actor who is dressed to look like Rachel, this feels a little too close to home for Bel, so she leaves angrily.

On the way home, Bel is shocked to see Rachel Price, her long-lost mother. Confused, Bel runs home, and Rachel follows and knocks on the door. She tells Bel that she was imprisoned for 16 years and has just been released. Bel calls her father, who arrives home and is shocked to see Rachel. Bel always imagined that her father would be overjoyed to see Rachel, but, instead, he seems scared.

The documentary is renamed The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and a media circus ensues. The police find evidence supporting Rachel’s claim, including a bag that she supposedly had over her head on the highway, where she claims to have been released after years of captivity. Rachel also claims never to have clearly seen the man who held her in a basement, and he is still at large.

Small details make Bel sense that something is amiss. Rachel accidentally slips up at one point and states that she was imprisoned for 15 years, not 16. She also remembers a bracelet that Bel had during the time that Rachel was supposedly imprisoned. Bel suspects that Rachel left of her own volition and has simply chosen to return after all these years. Bel joins forces with Ash, Ramsay’s brother, and they pursue a lead, searching for a person who claimed to have seen Rachel about a year before her official reappearance. Bel finds a still shot from CCTV footage that appears to show her mother, and although the identity of the person in the shot is inconclusive, the image is enough to confirm Bel’s suspicions that Rachel is not telling the whole truth.

Bel feels increasingly suspicious and unsafe around Rachel. She is also unhappy that her father is spending more time at work, leaving her alone in the house with Rachel. Overwhelmed by her uncertainties, Bel rebuffs Rachel’s efforts to spend time with her. Meanwhile, Carter likes Rachel and thinks that Bel is being overly paranoid. Carter and Rachel begin spending more time together.

At a dinner with the extended family, Ash records Jeff asking Patrick where Rachel was for all those years. Bel tries to get more information from Jeff and from her teacher, Mr. Tripp. Sherry (Carter’s mother) insinuates that Rachel was close to Mr. Tripp, and Bel learns that Rachel borrowed money from Mr. Tripp shortly before her disappearance. Bel cannot ask her grandfather, Patrick, as he has advanced dementia.

Meanwhile, romantic feelings develop between Bel and Ash, although Bel is quick to convince herself otherwise. Ms. Nelson, who lives across the road, claims to have seen a man lurking around the house at night. One morning, Bel wakes up to discover that Charlie is gone. She is devastated and confused and suspects that Rachel had something to do with his departure.

The narrative reveals that Phillip Alves, a man who is obsessed with the Rachel Price case, kidnapped Bel when she was eight years old to ask her about Rachel’s disappearance. He has since had a restraining order taken out against him, but now, he breaks into the Price house anyway, looking for clues. Bel encounters him in the dark house, and he lunges at her when he realizes that she is calling the police. Rachel arrives home in time to pull Phillip off Bel.

Noticing that Rachel asks lots of questions about Patrick’s movements, Bel anticipates her invasion of Patrick’s house by installing a camera there. Rachel comes over and finds the camera right away. Bel confronts Rachel about her lies and asks where Charlie is, but Rachel refuses to say.

Bel and Ash kiss, and Bel reminds herself that Ash, who is from England, will be leaving soon, as he is only in America for the documentary. She tells herself not to get attached to him.

Bel discovers from Jeff that Charlie lied to her about an event that occurred in her childhood after Rachel’s disappearance. Bel was once left in the car outside a Taco Bell for three hours, but Charlie has always laughingly insisted that it was only 15 minutes. Charlie also uses a loving tone to chide Bel for being clumsy around the house, and he pointedly scolds her for breaking one of his favorite mugs. However, Bel discovers the mug in a hidden place and realizes that Charlie is not as honest as she always believed him to be.

At a family dinner, Rachel presents Patrick with a copy of The Memory Thief. Bel thinks that there is significance to the gift that will help her to solve the mystery of both parents’ disappearances, so she goes to Patrick’s house and looks through his books with Ash. She finds a secret message in Patrick’s copy of The Memory Thief which reads, “My name is Rachel Price. I am being kept by Patrick Price in a red truck in Price Logging Yard” (329). Bel and Ash rush to Price Logging Yard, and when they search the red truck, they find Charlie manacled inside. He begs Bel to release him, but first, Bel has questions. Charlie will only talk to her, so Ash reluctantly leaves.

Rachel arrives and reveals that Bel’s grandfather, Patrick Price, imprisoned her for 15 years in the red truck as an alternative to killing her, which is what Charlie asked him to do. Carter is actually Rachel’s daughter, to whom she gave birth in the red truck. Bel believes Rachel, and they decide to leave Charlie imprisoned, but Jeff arrives and releases Charlie.

Charlie pursues Bel and Rachel, who run for their lives. Charlie grabs Rachel and is about to strike her with an ax, but, suddenly, Carter appears and pushes him off Rachel. Charlie falls into the mine below, grabbing Jeff on his way, and both men perish. Rachel goes down after them to hide the evidence while Bel destroys the footage at Ash’s hotel room. Although Ramsay and Ash later reveal that they have copies of the footage, they refrain from releasing it in order to protect Bel, Rachel, and Carter’s privacy.

Bel, Rachel, and Carter publicly feign ignorance about Jeff and Charlie’s whereabouts. Sherry, Carter’s adoptive mother, is extorted into moving away, and Rachel and her two daughters move in together. Bel finally resolves her fears of abandonment once she learns that Rachel was forcibly taken from her. She is also able to say farewell to Ash without rancor, and she accepts that Carter might leave them one day to pursue career opportunities, but Bel knows that she will always come back.