Our Roommate is Missing (Book 2) by "Emily Chase"

**This blog contains adult language.**

Warning: Contains Spoilers!!!  This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself.  Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know which girl acted like a total bitch in this book because you know at least one of them did.

Tag Line: (I had to search for this on a different edition because mine didn't have one.)  The girls are desperate.  (Pretty lame, huh?)

From the Back of the Book: Who kidnapped Shelley?  Shelley is missing, and her roommates, Faith and Dana, are frantic.  Where is she?  Then the FBI agents arrive at Canby Hall to investigate.  Shelley's disappearance has turned into a kidnapping case.  A week of mystery has begun for Faith and Dana, and a week of terror has begun for Shelley.  In their second adventure, The Girls of Canby Hall face danger together.

Trigger Warning: Wrath and Kam need to skip this one. If either of you started reading this, please stop now. If anyone comments on the Facebook post, please remember to keep it vague and not mention details. Thanks. 💖

Welcome to the strangest book of the entire series, y'all. I do not know how this became part of the Canby universe.

This book was published in 1983 and I've read it before. I didn't understand what it was doing in the series then and I don't understand what's doing here now either. It's one of life's greatest mysteries. The ghostie for this book is Mary Francis Shura. I did a quick Goodreads search of her name and a lot came up. She seems to write books about troubled kids or kids put in mysterious situations. She even has a book called Our Teacher is Missing which seems like a very weird coincidence. She also wrote quite a few books for the Sunfire series which focused on romance and historical events. So she's definitely a prolific writer – that doesn't necessarily mean she was a good one. ::ahem::Cooney::ahem::

There's not really much to say about the cover except that Shelley looks pretty serene for someone who has been kidnapped.  She looks like she's talking to her aunt about lunch or something.  She definitely doesn't seem terrorized.

Canby Hall Catch-Up: So you know the drill. We have three protagonists: Dana (sophisticated fashionista), Faith (urban photographer) and Shelley (small-town farm girl). For the time being, Dana is dating Bret-the-two-timer from Oakley Prep and Shelley is hopelessly devoted to her hometown sweetheart Paul. I don't expect either of those to last. In the last book, our three roommates got off to a rocky start when Faith assumed that Shelley was a card-carrying member of the KKK and Shelley assumed that her roommates thought she was a country bumpkin. Only one of those was true. There was a lot of stupidity but they ended up putting it all behind them and becoming friends with the help of housemother-extraordinaire Alison. Dana started dating Bret and then found out he was cheating on her so everyone dressed up as gorillas and shouted Booga-Booga. Faith met bad-girl Casey who introduced her to drinking beer and sneaking out. Faith got punished for leaving campus after hours to convince Casey not to run away and then Shelley announced she wasn't returning back to Canby after Christmas break. She did though. We were also introduced to Gale (Shelley's extra 15 pounds that was mentioned about a billion times).

Missing, Presumed Dead: There were a lot of throw-away characters mentioned once and then forgotten but two were more pivotal characters in the first book: Dorothy who was built up to be this series Gigi and Polly who starred as Bret's side piece.  Neither of them are mentioned in this book at all so I have to assume they are pushing up tulips.

So, now that we're all caught up.....here we go.

The first two sentences of this book really set the tone.

“Shelley's disappearance didn't register on her two roommates, Faith and Dana, all at once. Not only were they slow to realize she was really gone, they even laughed about it.”

That sounds about right.

#legendaryfriendshipy'all

The book reminds us that the three girls got off to a rocky start because of assumptions and racial tension but now they are a trio who “giggled more than they glared”. Neat. A Parent-Alumni weekend is just ending and Dana has been some kind of ambassador serving tea and coffee while Faith has been taking pictures. They're both exhausted when they get back to the room 407.

Faith asks where Shelley is and Dana replies that she's lost. Faith snorts and says you can lose mittens but you can't lose your “overweight but nonetheless adorable” roommate. Fuck you, Faith. Why did she have to throw in the overweight part? That's just mean. I'm starting to hate her most of all.

And we seriously only made it to page 3 before someone mentioned Gale. Fuck me.

Dana jokes that it is strange because her mom brought a care package and Shelley is usually first in line whenever there's food near. Fuck you too, Dana.

We get a list of the girls' favorite snacks now. I'm going to go ahead and blog it because it will come up again in later books. Dana likes bagels and cream cheese, Faith likes pretzels and spicy mustard and Shelly likes peanut-butter cookies with chocolate kisses on top. They have a name. I don't care enough to look it up.

Both Faith's mom and Dana's mom had visited over the weekend but Shelley's parents had been unable to make it. She'd been busy, though, playing guide to Casey's Aunt Edie. When Casey heard her own parents weren't bothering to come she'd thrown a huge fit and refused to even talk to her aunt so Shelley stepped in. The two of them appeared to have fun throughout the weekend.

Time keeps passing and finally Dana gets worried. Curfew has come and gone and there's still no sign of Shelley. They go room to room to see if Shelley might be visiting someone else and check all the common areas but they don't find her. They don't want to report it to Alison right away because they don't want Shelley to get in trouble for breaking the rules but finally they head up to her room.

On the way up to Alison's room they hear her emergency line ring and then Alison comes striding out of her room. They manage to hide so she won't see them. No, I don't know why. Dana catches lights in the driveway below and they see three black sedans pull up outside. Faith recognizes Casey's parents as they get out of one of the cars. The girls creep downstairs to eavesdrop. They hear Casey's mom say that Casey has been kidnapped but they know it's not true because she was in her room when Faith checked to see if Shelley was there.

Sure enough, Casey is present and accounted for. Alison ushers Casey and her parents back upstairs to her room. Instantly everything is about Faith. She's upset that Casey gets to have a mother and a father when her own father was killed in the line of duty a few years ago. She crumples to the floor and begins to rock herself back and forth. Dana just rides it out. When Faith finally shakes it off, Dana tells her that maybe the kidnappers took the wrong girl. Maybe they have Shelley instead.

Faith thinks this is the dumbest idea she's ever heard. Dana reminds her that Casey had recently changed her hair to look like Shelley's and had adopted Shelley's style of dressing, including buying an identical parka.

I call SO MUCH #bullshit on this. All through the first book everyone commented about how Shelley's clothes were awful. There's no way Casey would imitate Shelley. If she needed to imitate someone, she would have picked Dana. This is ridiculous.

Dana supports her theory with the fact that Shelley has been hanging around Aunt Edie all weekend. Anyone watching would have assumed she was Casey. I call #bullshit again because Casey does not have Gale strapped to herself. Shura has told us twice in this book already how tiny Casey is. There's no way someone mistook Shelley for Casey in any believable fashion.

But these books don't have to be believable, do they?

Sigh.

Dana finally convinces Faith and they head for Alison's room to report Shelley missing. Casey's dad takes it all very seriously and immediately calls the FBI to tell them to come right to Canby Hall. (#bullshit) While they wait, he tells a huge story about him and his wife helping take down a ring of art thieves. Two attempts have been made on their lives and they've been staying away from Casey to protect her.

#bullshit Again. That doesn't explain the previous 15 years of neglect at all that Casey told us about extensively in the last book.   #fuckcontinuity

Mr Flint tells them that a little before midnight they got a call saying that Casey had been kidnapped and she would be held until the trial date passed to ensure that the Flints didn't testify against the art thief guy. The FBI arrives and tells Dana and Faith that they are instrumental to the investigation and will be the key to solving the crime.

#eyeroll #unnecessaryroom407worship

We hop into Shelley's head now. She takes us back a bit, telling us how disappointed she was that her family didn't come for the weekend. She was initially reluctant to spend the weekend with Aunt Edie (so why did she offer???) but she ended up having a great time. Before Aunt Edie got on the train she gave Shelley a bracelet to give to Casey that had Casey's name engraved on it.

#plotdevice

Shelley is pulled into a van at the train station and tied up. Her captors drive her for a long period of time. At one point she manages to get her hands on the door handle and opens it up, falling out onto the road. These are really inept kidnappers, y'all.

We skip back to Dana and Faith and it's now Monday morning. The trial is in 8 days which means Shelley will be with the kidnappers for that long. A quarantine sign has been placed on room 407. The students have been told that both Shelley and Casey have some kind of contagious illness and therefore Dana and Faith are quarantined as well. This is to keep Dana and Faith free to help the authorities because they're so vital to the investigation (#bullshit #unnecessaryroom407worship) and to keep anyone from knowing that it was Shelley who was kidnapped. Everyone is worried if the bad guys find out they got the wrong girl, Shelley will be......discarded. Casey has been spirited away to the Greenleaf Inn with her parents and Shelley's parents are due in that afternoon.

The girls are sneaked away from Canby to the Inn where they listen to the phone call from the kidnappers to see if they can identify the voice. Why the Fibbies think two 15-year-old private school girls would recognize the voice of a kidnapper is beyond me. This is all so stupid. They spend the day at the Inn with Casey so they'll be close at hand if the Fibbies need anything else. Eventually they are sneaked back to Canby. Alison tells them that Casey's parents will be leaving the next day and Casey will be hidden in Alison's room. It's very important that no one see Casey at all. She asks the girls to bring some of Casey's things up to her room which is just dumb because (1) the girls are not supposed to be seen out of their room and (2) people will wonder why Casey's things are being taken to Alison's room. This is SO FUCKING DUMB.

Faith tells Dana that clearly they need to Nancy Drew the shit out of this because no one except them can possibly find Shelley.

We get an entire chapter of Dana and Faith packing up a box of things to take up to Casey and basically just snooping through her stuff. I don't think any of it's important but if I'm wrong I'll just add it in later and you'll never know the difference. #readthebookyourself

Bret keeps calling Dana. There's some kind of supper and dance that Friday and she's supposed to be telling him whether or not she can go. She knows she's can't go with Shelley gone but she's not allowed to tell him why so she tries to duck the call at first. The lady who answers the phone in Baker House gets tired of Bret calling over and over, though, and Dana is ordered to the phone. She tells Bret she can't make it and he asks her if she's going home for the weekend or something. He's clearly pissed and hurt and snaps that he's sure it's a matter of life and death. Dana starts crying then, because it really could be a matter of life and death for Shelley. Bret loses his mad and gets worried when he hears her crying but she still can't explain and she hangs up on him.

We land back in Shelley's head now. Her attempt to escape was pretty pathetic and she was immediately picked back up and thrown in the van. She finally figures out that they meant to kidnap Casey and she does her best to convince them that they got the wrong girl. They search her pockets for ID (which she isn't carrying) and find the bracelet engraved with Casey's name which convinces them that she's Casey. Wow. That was so unpredictable. #sarcasm

They finally come to a stop and Shelley finds herself in a filthy room with no heat. She can tell she's out in the middle of nowhere by the fact it's dead quiet outside and the stars are bright in the sky instead of dimmed by city lights. There's a cot and a blanket in the corner. The bad guys untie her and leave her alone in the room. She lays down on the cot and cries herself to sleep.

The next morning she wakes up and decides to explore a little. There's one window high up. The place is covered in dirt and grime and the tiny bathroom is disgusting. There's a bench just inside the door where her captors have put a pitcher of water and a basin. I guess for her to clean up? Eventually the door opens and a masked man sets a carton of milk and a bag full of donuts on the bench before he leaves again. She still hasn't checked the door but I guess she's assuming that it's locked or guarded or something. It's the very first thing I would have checked.

As she sits on the bed and eats her donuts she comes to the conclusion that she's being held in an old saw mill. How, you ask? No fucking clue. She's only seen this one room. I guess we're just going to accept that she's right. She tries to keep her mind occupied by visiting her home in Pine Bluff in her mind. She uses dust to make piles under the bed to keep track of her days. Finally on Wednesday she decides to start eavesdropping at the door to see if she can learn anything interesting. She hears her captors say “Melrose” a couple of times and decides that must be where she is. I mean, it is about a decade too early to be Melrose Place they're talking about so she might be right. #shrug

One day she's awakened by one of the captors. He blindfolds her and then ushers her into the next room which is warm. He tells her that they have her “dad” on the phone and she's not to do anything fancy or he'll shoot her. She feels what she assumes is a gun against her head and she knows she has to comply. But she's been preparing for this moment and she has a plan.

Mr Flint is doing a great job of pretending she's Casey. His half of the conversation isn't really important but Shelley says two things. First she tells him that she's being fed but it's not “mushroom soup or mashed potatoes.” Then this.....

“Tell Mama-Millie that I love her. And thank Aunt Rose for the magnificent days. I'm fine, not marvelous, but fine.”

This was her grand plan I guess.

We're back with Dana and Faith and it's Thursday. They've been allowed to go back to classes but they don't have much of an attention span and go about in a general fog. Some chick named Mindy rocks up in this chapter and chats away at Dana about Algebra and Choir for a very long time. I have a feeling she'd be better served by taking a gardening class instead because she's sure to be under the tulips by next book. Dana is called into Alison's room where Faith, Casey and a Fibbie disguised as a plumber are waiting to listen to the tape of Shelley's phone call. Everyone decides it's really bizarre but they can't figure it out. The Fibbie leaves.

Faith has printed out pictures from the weekend and she notices a man that appears in several of the shots that appears out of place. This man also appears in a picture that Casey has of her father from a long time ago. Because of course it's going to be that fucking easy. Alison leaves at this point to drive to the Inn and get the Fibbie. Why can't she just call him, you ask? Because this is a plot device, dear readers and Shura needs Alison out of the picture for a few moments.

Faith thinks she might have decoded Shelley's message. Dana wants to tell the Fibbie but Faith thinks she's in a Point Horror all of a sudden and refuses to give the FBI this very vital information because she thinks they won't take her seriously.

#whattheactualfuck #thisisNOTPointHorror

Faith wants Dana to arrange for Bret to drive them somewhere Friday night and she plans to sign them both out for a “weekend visit” to Dana's house so they can go save Shelley from the kidnappers.

#sigh #SERIOUSLYthisisNOTPointHorrordamnit

The girls go over Shelley's phone call and catch sight of all the 'm's' in the message. They think this is significant. Dana cracks the word “Millie” right away and concludes that Shelley is being held in a mill. The word “Rose” sticks out to Faith because it doesn't begin with an 'm' like everything else. They look at a map and Casey notices the nearby town of Melrose. #NancyDrewstotherescue

Faith reminds them not say anything to the grown-ups because they would never be believed. #thisisNOTafuckingPointHorror

Faith's big plan to to sign out for the weekend and spend the night somewhere in Bret's car so they can drive to Melrose on Saturday and look for an old mill. There seem to be a lot of issues with this plan but I stopped caring when Shura forgot what book series she was writing for. #dowhatyouwant

Bret picks the girls up for the dance and is puzzled by the suitcases but doesn't say anything right away. They all have a good time and then toward the end of the evening he asks what the hell is going on. Dana explains Faith's master plan to him and Bret is puzzled. He asks why they have to sleep in the car overnight. Couldn't they have just left from Canby tomorrow morning? BRET IS THE ONLY SMART ONE IN THIS BOOK, Y'ALL. Faith admits that it never occurred to her to do it that way. Now they can't because they already signed out for the weekend and it would look suspicious for them to go home.

Bret is understandably nervous about this plan. It's been snowing, he's not the most experienced driver and his car is kind of a death trap. He asks what it's about and Dana implies that Shelley ran away and they need to find her. Bret agrees because he knows they'll find a way to do it if he refuses and he doesn't want them to go alone.

They spend the night in the car which is just stupid after we've been told it's cold enough to snow. They totally would have died. But Shura isn't concerned with realism here.

The next morning Bret comes out to the car. He drives them to a diner on the highway and they discuss the fact they're looking for a mill where the waitress can hear them. She stuns them by saying there's dozens of them in the area they're targeting: flour, lumber, textile, etc. Dana and Faith deflate a bit. They'd been thinking there there would be only one. #thisisnottheHighlander

We spend a chapter with Shelley but literally all we learn of value is that someone named Ames planned the whole thing. Other than that, she's just fantasizing about her life in Pine Bluff and thinking of taking a shower because it's been 6 days and she feels gross.

We're back with our two Nancy Drews and our Hardy Boy. They've checked out three mills with no luck and they're feeling discouraged. Bret suggests they stop for lunch because the roads are getting bad and he's hella stressed. He's not giving up, though, because he wants to be sure the girls stay safe. They stop at a cafe and the owner is chatty and lonely. There's a lot of useless padding in this chapter too but eventually he points them to the only mill that still in operation in the area. It's a lumber mill that never closes for the winter.

They barely make it there in the snow. Dana has Bret park by the road and turn the car around so they can make a quick getaway if necessary. Then she and Faith separate and head for the mill. As Dana is walking up, two men appear hauling crates. Dana recognizes them as the same kind of crate that Casey has in her closet and knows instantly that she's found the kidnappers. They see her and she makes a run for it, sliding off the path and into an icy pond. They leave her for dead.

Faith sees the whole thing happen and doubles back toward Bret. She tells him to go for help and he reluctantly gets back into the car and leaves them. Faith goes back toward the mill and sees the men bring Shelley out and push her into a van. They take off after Bret. She looks around the building and finds Shelley's barrette. Then Dana shows up, wet and half frozen and Faith pulls her inside.

She puts Dana in front of the fire and takes off her wet clothes. #thisisNOTthatkindofbookShura She finds some old overalls and a sweatshirt and puts Dana in those, tying a rope around the waist to cinch them to her. She makes Dana some tea and this is all very surreal. They're just hanging out in this criminal lair. Faith does locate the phone to call the police but she doesn't remember exactly where she is which is probably an issue in 1983.

They hear voices outside and Faith is stunned when Bret walks in the door. That's nothing compared to how stunned Bret is to see Dana. He immediately goes to her and hugs her tightly saying that he thought she was dead. Police are hot on his heels and they herd all the teens out into cruisers. Faith is ecstatic to find that Shelley has been rescued. The police say that Bret pretty much saved the day and then Bret goes and ruins it all by saying that Shelley looks better than ever because she apparently got Gale off her ass while she was kidnapped.

#fuckyouBret

So apparently the police were out looking for motorists who might need help. They saw Bret come barreling down the road out of control. He spun out a few times and then hit a snowplow which blocked the road completely. The kidnappers tried to drive around him and ended up sliding into a ditch. Shelley was in the back screaming her head off and the police rescued her and arrested the bad guys. The bad guys told them about Faith and that the brown-haired girl had fallen into a pond and drowned. That's why Bret thought Dana was dead.

Girls are rescued, parents are called, everyone fills everyone else in on what happened and then they're returned to Canby and Oakley. Alison orders the girls up to her room. PA (head bitch in charge) is there and she tells them that rules exist for a reason but the Fibbies have stated that they never would have solved the case without the 407 crew (#eyeroll) so they are all getting away unpunished. Then they have snacks and think about how wonderful it is to be friends.

The Least Annoying Person in Greenleaf Award:  I was totally going to give this to Bret for unquestioningly supporting Dana but then he had to go and fuck it up by mentioning Gale.  I'm giving this one to Alison because everyone else pissed me off.

The Bitch of Baker House Award:  I give this to everyone but Alison.  Holy fuck I want Cary back.  Or Randy. When does Randy get here?  We need Randy.  Everyone else is so fucking annoying.

Coming up Next:  IDK.  Dana and Shelley are fighting or something.  This book didn't tell me.