Book Review: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

 

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All the Missing Girls is the first in a new series by Megan Miranda who has written several books for Young Adults. This is her first book for adults.

Nic returns home to Cooley Ridge to help her brother ready the family home for sale. Their father is suffering dementia and now in a nursing home. The sale of the house is required to pay mounting bills. Once Nic arrived home it was like never leaving and the memories came flooding back. She’d left the town 10 years ago after her friend Corrine disappeared without a trace. Two weeks on and Annaleise Carter goes missing, swallowed up by the woods, just like Corrine.

The story is told in the first person by Nic, but we can see she is not telling it all, she is always guarded, holding back. (The unreliable narrator is a tried and true formula and Miranda uses it well in this story).
Written in reverse chronological order from day 15 down to day 1 you really need to be paying attention with this twisty, breath-holding mystery which will have you second guessing all the way through.
As the police start investigating the disappearance of Annaleise, Nic is still haunted by the disappearance of best friend Corrine 10 years earlier and goes over the details leading up to the event where personalities are laid bare and long held secrets divulged.

I love a mystery where you are so sure that you have it all worked out and then BAM, you learn you had it all wrong.

All the Missing Girls is a hauntingly compelling story written around the eerie backdrop of the woods of Cooley Ridge.

This is a story you will want to read over again as soon as you’ve finished the last page.

I received a review copy from the publisher.

Book Review: Slow Horses (Slough House #1) by Mick Herron

 

Slow Horses by Mick Herron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Slow Horses is Herron’s first book in the Slough House series, recently re-released in conjunction with the release of book 4, Spook Street.

After a mission gone terribly wrong River Cartwright is sent to Slough House, a place where tasks that didn’t matter were preformed by people that didn’t care. Where alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.

The story is told with a wry wit, in metaphors, retrospect and hypotheticals with plenty of laugh out loud moments and dark humour.

Slow Horses is an introduction to the main characters, the cast outs, at Slough House and their boss Jackson Lamb. The characterization is brilliant as Herron brings together a mismatched bunch of has-beens, loners that haven’t quite given up on the hope of one day returning to Regents Park.

Under all the character development is a great plot with backstabbing, twists, conspiracy theories, double crossing and buck passing. It’s compelling and edgy and pulls the story along with a rush of adrenaline as the pace quickens and events spiral out of control.

Wanting to read more of Jackson Lamb and his Slough House crew will be difficult to resist.