Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Incident on the Bridge by Laura McNeal

The Incident on the Bridge by Laura McNeal

The Incident on the Bridge

by Laura McNeal

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Apr 2016, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

From National Book Award nominee Laura McNeal comes a riveting, tautly-told novel that is at once hopeful and harrowing. Perfect for fans of We Were Liars and Bone Gap.

When Thisbe Locke is last seen standing on the edge of the Coronado Bridge, it looks like there is only one thing to call it. But her sister Ted is not convinced. Despite the witnesses and the police reports and the divers and the fact that she was heartbroken about the way things ended with Clay and how she humiliated herself at that party, Thisbe isn't the type of person to end up just an "incident."

While everyone in town prepares to mourn the loss (some more than others), Ted and Fen, the new kid in town, set out to put the pieces together and find her sister.

But if Thisbe didn't jump, what happened up on that bridge?

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. McNeal writes with a mature hand, expert pacing, and an immediacy that ensures readers will be engrossed. Ages 12+." - Publishers Weekly

"While the psychologically damaged kidnapper is deftly portrayed, an overload of teen angst and an all too sudden ending damages this suspenseful kidnapping tale. Grade 8 & up." - School Library Journal

"The third-person narration moves from character to character, lending the investigation a quickly paced authority, but the story naturally feels disjointed due to so many character voices. Expert pacing will keep readers turning the pages until they know Thisbe's fate. Ages 14-18." - Kirkus

This information about The Incident on the Bridge was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Teilor Dunne

Book
A really really good book.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Laura McNeal Author Biography

Laura McNeal is the author of three other novels, including Dark Water, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature. With her husband, Tom McNeal, she has collaborated on four novels, a picture book, two sons, and the restoration of a historic house. They live near San Diego.

Link to Laura McNeal's Website

Other books by Laura McNeal at BookBrowse
  • Dark Water jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more YA thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.