Published by Corvus
02 February 2017
In Trade Paperback £12.99 and eBook
Copy : Paperback - Received from publisher as part of blog tour
The Blurb
It's been ten years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared without trace. Then a letter from her father arrives - 'I need to talk to you. That girl. I saw that girl.' Has her father's dementia worsened, or has he really seen Corinne? Returning home, Nicolette must finally face what happened on that terrible night all those years ago.
Then, another young woman goes missing, almost to the day of the anniversary of when Corinne vanished. And like ten years ago, the whole town is a suspect.
Told backwards - Day 15 to Day 1 - Nicolette works to unravel the truth, revealing shocking secrets about her friends, her family, and what really happened to Corinne. Like nothing you've ever read before, All the Missing Girls is a brilliantly plotted debut thriller that will leave you breathless.
The Very Pink Notebook Review
I love being asked to be part of a psychological thriller tour especially when the blurb is as enticing as the one for All The Missing Girls. But it was not only the synopsis for this book that hooked me but the fact that the story was to be told in reverse.
I have to admit, this notion did mess with my head somewhat and for the first few chapters I kept finding myself wanting to go back and read the previous chapter, thinking it would help the current one make more sense. However, once I told myself to just read, it actually panned out as any novel does, with each chapter revealing the next snippet of information, moving the plot forward, even though we were going backwards.
There are essentially two mysteries in this book and I never quite knew if they were actually going to end up interlinking, or whether they were going to transpire to be completely separate events. The narrator is Nicolette, best friend of the first missing girl and neighbour of the second. Returning to her childhood home in the wake of her father's worsening dementia, we are taken on her journey of discovery - that you can never really run away from your past.
Because we are told the story in reverse, you realise at the end, the discoveries and realisations are all met very early on for the characters, and thereafter they play a game of damage limitation. This made me realise I didn't actually like any of the characters very much. Nicolette seems to want to place them all as victims. Victims of enigmatic, but mean spirited and selfish Corrine. But by the end you realise, by their subsequent actions, none of them are or ever were victims at all.
This certainly was a book I could not guess or work out which way the plot was going to turn next and I enjoyed how the author kept the two threads of story weaving and then undoing at the same time. I imagined the two missing girls to be like large gust of winds around the characters in a desert, sweeping around them blurring their vision and confusing them.
As much as I disliked the characters the author shows a great depth of knowledge about them all within the writing, and I liked that their past and history and back stories were the foundation to where they all found themselves in life. Something terrible happened when they were young and although some ran away and some stayed, none of them ever moved on. It was a great way to make the whole atmosphere feel really quite claustrophobic.
In short, All The Missing Girls, is a complex psychological thriller, and although unique in its reverse telling it doesn't actually make it overtly easy to follow. You do feel you are constantly battling against your own logic of what should be happening. Having said that, the writing is excellent in its balance of imagery, dialogue and narration and I did enjoy the book.
All The Missing Girls receives a Very Pink Notebook rating of :
Follow the Tour
All The Missing Girls continues it's blog tour tomorrow with Hannah Reviewing Books.
About the Author
Megan Miranda is the author of the young adult novels FRACTURE, HYSTERIA, VENGEANCE, and SOULPRINT. Her next young adult novel, THE SAFEST LIES, will be published by Crown BFYR/Random House on May 24th, 2016. Her first novel for adults, ALL THE MISSING GIRLS, is published in the UK in 2017. Megan has a degree in Biology from MIT and currently lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and two children.
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