All the Missing Girls: A Novel

I was totally engrossed from the get-go with this novel. Fabulous. Like another reviewer, I too was initially hooked by the book cover. This is a review whereby I again find myself saying 'stop comparing to novels to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train' - this is a stand alone thriller not to be compared to any other. I could NOT put this down. I read WAY too late into the night/after midnight hours, I found myself doing something I NEVER do: picking my Kindle up to continue at odd moments during the day when I wanted to spend a little 'relaxing' time. The novel told 'in reverse' definitely adds to the entire drama of the story....be patient! It's worth it. I am a huge 'highlighter' - those philosophical thoughts put down by the author, a unique/interesting/captivating way of explaining something, things that make me literally stop my reading and stare into space digesting what I just read - it's visceral - I highlighted more in this novel than any other. I LOVE how this author writes. I'm hoping my following examples of what I highlighted help portray what I mean - I think sentences/passages put down by the author in this novel were of equal value to the amazing story. Examples to whet the appetite: "I knew that voice like twelve years of history filed down into a single memory, a single syllable." "He wasn't losing his mind, he was just lost within it. There was a difference. I lived in there. TRUTH lived in there." "He looked up, his blue eyes watery, slippery as his thoughts." "Only a sane person would realize how close he or she was to the edge. Not like my dad, who didn't know when he was teetering too close to that chasm, didn't seem to notice the change in velocity as he went tumbling into the abyss." "The car was too cramped, too hot, and I rolled our windows down, the air running through my hair like a memory I couldn't grasp." "People were like Russian nesting dolls - versions stacked inside the latest edition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight." "Something that had led her here, and she'd seeped into the cavern walls - her bone the smooth rock, her teeth the jagged stone, her clothes disintegrating in the darkness." "But for me, this was scarier. He wasn't clawing for sanity, or fighting for understanding, or raging against the unfamiliar. He was letting go." "The facts. The facts were difficult to see clearly. The facts were like the view from our porch - shadows in darkness and shapes you could conjure up from fear itself." "Nobody would ever love you so fiercely, so meanly, so thoroughly. And the parts of you that you wanted to keep hidden - she loved those most of all." "I think Corinne believed that life could break even somehow. That there was an underlying fairness to it all. That the years on earth were all a game. A risk for a payoff, a test for an answer, a tally of allies and enemies, and a score at the end." "The way he spoke made me think he wasn't from here. Not this town, anyway. An hour east was all it took to make a difference. the mountains and the single winding road kept this place separate, insular." "We had developed a habit after our mother got sick, fighting in the space between words about anything other than what we meant." "I thought of all the little things I'd held on to. All the little things I'd taken with me when I left. A fine, transparent thread leading all the way home." "Her power, I realized, was not limitless, as we had all believed. It had borders, and when she left that house, she refused to give another inch. It was a learned trait: how to push, how to manipulate. She knew the line to walk, She learned that from her father - PUSH BUT NOT TOO HARD; CRACK BUT DO NOT BREAK. The darkness lives in everyone. She knew this better than anyone. Everyone had two faces, and she looked deep into us each until she found it." "There was something both familiar and discomforting about the rain here. In the city, it hit the windows and streets and flooded the gutters, like it was encroaching on us. It caused traffic jams and made apartment lobbies too slippery. But here, the rain was just another part of the landscape. Like it was the thing that lived here and we were merely visitors." "Some religions believe time is cyclical, my father had said. That there are repeating ages. But to others, time is God. A gift for us to stretch out and exist in." "Because the thing about standing here in the middle of the mountains with the rain coming down, in a house your grandfather built, is that it's too easy to notice how insignificant you are." "It wasn't in church but in moments like this when I maybe believed in God or something like that. Some order to the chaos, some meaning. That we collide with the people we need, that we meet the ones who will love us, that there's some underlying reason to everything." "........But that's childhood. Before you realize that every step is a choice. That something must be given up for something to be gained. Everything on a scale, a weighing of desires, an ordering of which you want more - and what you'd be willing to give for it." "It happens like this - men losing themselves in moments of passion. We drive them to it. It's not their fault." "There is nothing more dangerous, nothing more powerful, nothing more necessary and essential for survival than the lies we tell ourselves." "If there's a feeling to home, it's this. A place where there are no secrets, where nothing stays buried: not the past and not yourself. Where you can be all the versions of you, see it all reflected back as you walk the same stairs, the same halls, the same rooms." "It's the four walls echoing back everything you've ever been and everything you've ever done, and it's the people who stay despite it all. Through it all. For it all. Where you can stop fearing the truth. Let it be part of you. Take it to bed. Stare it in the face." And then there are the author's quotes by Soren Kierkegaard - one the author provides at the beginning of the novel, the other at the end (which I found to be brilliantly done by the author): "It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards." "It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards."

This book definitely kept my interest. I am obsessed with psychological thriller’s and mysteries. I also love a good love story entangled with a happy ending. Did this story have a HEA? I’m not sure. It alluded to the possibility. I’ve never read a book where each chapter goes backwards in time instead of forward. Very interesting technique that kept me turning the pages. The author did an excellent job tying everything together in a neat red bow at the end. First off, this story has several characters but it’s narrated by the FMC Nicollette (Nic). She’s engaged to a lawyer in Philadelphia where she’s lived and went to college there for 10 years. She gets a panicked call from her brother back in a rural area of NC and decides to pack up and head home to help him get their family home on the market. Her father is in a retirement home due to his dementia. Ten years ago, Nic left everything behind after her best friend disappeared, including her boyfriend Tyler. She’s been back a few times to visit but she prefers to run away instead of look at the truth. I’ll say Nic is not a very likable character. I don’t have to like the main character to enjoy a story. She barely asks questions to find out answers. She chooses to stay in a house that has no a/c in hot NC, the house itself is unsafe and anytime someone tries to help her she turns them down. She and Tyler have a lot of baggage to unpack. She takes off her large /expensive engagement ring and doesn’t place it some place safe. (When I got engaged the ring only came off for cleanings and for making certain foods but I always placed it where I knew it would be. And still do) There were some excellent twists and revelations in this book. The day she arrives in her old house, her brother Daniel is there. Then lo and behold Tyler shows up with his new girlfriend Annalise, who happens to be a neighbor beyond the woods in the back of the house. And gee, not even 24 hours later Annalise goes missing. One of the last things she did was inquire about Corrine who has been missing for 10 years. How coincidental she goes missing the first night Nic is home…..or is it?? Don’t hesitate to grab this book!!!!

Probably 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it and it definitely held my interest. I had trouble putting it down because I wanted to know what was going to happen. Nicolette returns to her hometown after ten years to help care for her ailing father and sell his home. She is engaged to a successful lawyer, but once she arrives back home, she is faced with seeing her high school boyfriend dating her younger neighbor. Shortly after she arrives home, the younger neighbor goes missing, which brings up memories of her high school best friend who went missing ten years prior. The story is told in reverse, from day 15 back to day 1, which is a bit confusing, but also a unique style that I did like. The title is also deceiving since “All the Missing Girls” = 2 missing girls. But, whatever. I can overlook that. Enjoyable read overall.

A page turner! Twists and turns, truths and lies, a great book to which I would have never guessed the ending. Start reading it early in the day so you won't be reading all night!

Sehr spannend

Loved the book opening, struggled with part two but then became completely engaged trying to work out how it was going to end. A good read.

A good thriller but the structure of the book (starting with Day 14 and going back to Day 1) really did my head in. It was an original device to maintain suspense but it was too confusing for me.... Apart from that the story is fine, the plot unexpected and there is a happy ending, so my overall impression is positive.

It’s a really good thriller. The narrative being backwards , it’s quite different and a lovely read. It’s unputdownable..

This is a good thriller that kept my attention. The story is told backwards, which did create some confusion on the timeline of things for me personally. Nicole returns to her small town home to look after her dad. A decade before Nicole's best friend, Corinne, had mysteriously disappeared. While Nicole is back in her small hometown, another girl, Annaliese, has suddenly disappeared. Are the disappearances connected? Is her former boyfriend, Tyler, involved or their childhood friends? The story is about mistakes we make as teenagers and how decisions made then can haunt you for the rest of your life. Good book.