Island of Lost Girls is a novel by Jennifer McMahon published in 2008.
Rhonda Farr was on her way to a job interview at the local gas station when she sees something you don't see every day. A Child kidnapping by a person dressed in a giant white bunny costume. Feeling guilty over this Rhonda decides to try and help the search for the missing Ernestine "Ernie" Florucci. However something nags in her mind. She has memories how her once inseparable best friend Lizzy Shale had just left town two weeks into high school and how she had unrequited feelings for her brother Peter Shale. To her horror Peter is a suspect in Ernie's abduction and Rhonda feels she must explore the case further.
Tropes in this novel:
- Amateur Sleuth: Rhonda becomes one to try and figure out what happened to Ernie but mutliple people including Pat, Warren and Ernie's cousin Katy all try to come up with ideas.
- Chekhov's Gun: Laura Lee's car is mentioned of having been in the shop for multiple issues Peter is working on repairing. One Rhonda discovers in the log is that the passenger door won't stay shut unless its locked. This turns out be what killed Ernie Florucci as Warren did not know this and during a wide turn the door opened and she was flung out into the road and down into the woods.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Peter and Tock formed one. Rhonda is jealous she did not form one with Peter.
- Creepy Child: Gretchen "Tock" Clark is introduced this way. She shoots flaming arrows and bb guns at the main trio from up in a tree and only agrees to be in their play if she can play a character that kills. She has grown out of this in the 2006 chapters but is still generally regarded as a wild personality.
- Disposing of a Body: After Lizzy bludgeoned her father in defense, Peter, Tock and her bury him in the trap door under their stage. Rhonda arrives too late to know this but becomes an unknowing accessory to tearing down the stage.
- Warren also does this to Ernie's body after she accidentally feel out of the car and died from the injuries.
- Flashback: The narrative jumps back and forth from the present in 2006 back to 1993 to show the history of the main characters as children.
- Innocent Inaccurate: Rhonda misses on some of the cues that her best friend Lizzy was being abused as a child that she realizes in horror as Lizzy tells the story as an adult.
- Love Dodecahedron: Compared to the next generation the older characters have a much more complicated past. Rhonda's father Clem was married to Peter and Lizzy's mother Aggie. But Aggie cheated on Clem with his best friend Daniel. Clem got married then to Justine, Rhonda's mother. But As Aggie and Daniel's marriage falls apart, Aggie briefly cheats with Clem while Daniel instead cheats with Tock's mother Laura Lee and molests his own daughter Lizzy.
- Love Triangle: Rhonda always felt in one with Peter and Tock but this generally seemed one-sided as Peter clearly chose Tock.
- The Not-Love Interest: Peter is this to Rhonda.
- Not What It Looks Like: Rhonda makes several judgments that assumes Peter's guilt at something that he was innocent of. When she learns he was seen with a woman who might be Lizzy and a child at the motel she worried they had kidnapped Ernie. It turns out the girl was Lizzy's own daughter.
- Later Rhonda finds a dirty child's shoe in Aggie's house which she believes was Ernie's when in reality it belonged to Suzy.
- Parental Abandonment: Everyone believes Daniel Shale abandoned his family due to gambling debts he owed and disappeared only to come back to take Lizzy a few years later. This turns out to only be a fictional cover story that in reality Daniel was never around because Lizzy had killed him.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The abduction and predatory interactions are done by someone dressed up in a giant rabbit costume which actually appeals to the victim but provides the usual incredulous response by the police and witness as this trope normally inspires.
- Shout-Out: Due to the below mentioned Show Within a Show Gretchen ends up taking on the nickname "Tock" for the rest of her life after the ticking crocodile in Peter Pan.
- Show Within a Show: The main characters stage a play performance of Peter Pan within the 1993 chapters.
- Surprise Incest: In-universe Rhonda fears this when she does the math and believes Peter is actually her biological brother. Though she turns out to have this wrong as Aggie cheated on Clem with Daniel before they got divorced so Peter wasn't biologically related to Rhonda.
