Synopsis:
A year ago, beloved cheerleader Stella Blackthorn vanished without a trace. Devastated, her younger sister, Iris, launched her own investigation, but all she managed to do was scare off the police’s only lead and earn a stern warning: Once she turns eighteen, more meddling means prison-level consequences.
Then, a year later, the unthinkable happens. Iris’s ex-girlfriend, Heather, goes missing, too—just after dropping the polarising last episode of her true crime podcast all about Iris’s sister. This time, nothing will stop Iris and her amateur sleuthing agency from solving these disappearances.
But with a suspicious detective watching her every move, an enemy-turned-friend-turned-maybe-more to contend with, and only thirty days until she turns eighteen, it’s a race against the clock for Iris to solve the most dangerous case of her life.
Review:
I’m getting really tired of the constant DNFs this year. So as you can tell, How to Find a Missing was a DNF. I literally stopped partway through a chapter because I couldn’t handle any more of it and it was really affecting my mood towards reading.
For quite a while I kept questioning whether this was a sequel. A lot of the content was written as if you already knew the characters and their backstories. Unfortunately there wasn’t really a set up for these disappearances and the author gave me no reason to care. I got halfway through the book and still didn’t find myself trying to guess what had happened and, in my opinion, that’s absolutely something you should be doing with a mystery thriller.
There was too much repetition. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress with the book because I was constantly being told the same things. Yes, I understand that you didn’t listen to Heather’s podcast because it would upset you, you don’t need to tell me every chapter.
“They’re draped over my chair, I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Sammy’s splayed out on my bed, because none of us ever sit anywhere properly.” I feel like the author is trying too hard to make these characters quirky and it’s really making me dislike them (the characters, I have no real issue with the author). Sammy is constantly described as wearing some type of weird or eccentric earrings. This isn’t a quirk but every time you see Lea her description always includes “six fingered hands” in some way.
I love the representation of sexuality – this is always a great thing to see talked about so openly and proudly but the constant reminder of character’s sexualities was too much. You told me one chapter ago that Lea is bisexual, you don’t need to tell me again. The repetition of these descriptions got old very fast and while I love the representation, it didn’t need to happen so often.
“If anyone can figure out what really happened to that girl, it’s you” even though iris has given absolutely no reason for anyone to think this. At the halfway mark she’s a poor man’s Pippa Fitz-Amobi and that’s a bit of a stretch. At least Pip was likeable. Iris is insufferable. She thinks she can do a better job than the police because she claims they haven’t found evidence in four days. Does she think the police would share evidence with a random 17 year old? They have no idea Heather is her ex girlfriend so why would they tell her anything?
I would love to find something positive to say about How to Find a Missing Girl as it is a debut and I don’t want to be too harsh, but there’s genuinely nothing I enjoyed about this book.
Check out Young Creative Press on all socials
You can also check out my StoryGraph here
Like this post? Why not read this one too: To Be Read: August 2024