The novel is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping centre in 1984, and the people who try to discover what happened to her twenty years later.

[1] O'Flynn found inspiration for What Was Lost while she was working as an assistant manager in a record shop.

She found ideas for her book from her job in the Merry Hill Shopping Centre near Dudley in the West Midlands.

A 10-year-old girl called Kate Meaney frequently plays in the newly opened Green Oaks.

Kate vanishes and Adrian, the 22-year-old son of a newsagent, is the prime suspect in her disappearance.

[1] The Costa Book Awards' judging panel, chaired by Joanna Trollope, praised the novel for "blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery.

[1] It won the Jelf Group First Novel Award for which O'Flynn received a prize of £2,500.