All the Missing Girls

Spoiler Alert: Don't go into the woods at night (just don't).

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Wow. What a true to its word, fast-paced, thriller. In Megan Miranda's adult novel debut, she managed to include mystery, murder, scandal, nostalgia, romance, lies, bombshells, which all comes back to, well you guessed it - 2 missing girls. Nicolette Farrell, after putting her past life in her her small town far, far behind her, is forced to return after her father's condition worsens. Her brother calls with the news they are going to sell their house, so she decides to come immediately - although she has ulterior motives. She leaves her seemingly too perfect fiancee behind as she quite literally travels back in time. Once she arrives in Cooley Ridge, (side note: totally sounds like a perfect setting of a Scooby-Doo movie doesn't it?) she finds a very similar predicament to that she endured 10 years ago. A girl has gone missing without any explanation, not unlike Nicolette's best friend Corinne. In a shocking, and true addictive story fashion, Miranda turns this story on its head with a catch - the story is told backwards. Starting two weeks after Nic arrives in her hometown, and ending on her first night there, while of course intertwining what really happened all those years ago -- it was quite frankly impossible to put this book down. As the book goes on, you realize no one is as innocent as you thought, and by the end everything really does come in full circle. My heart was beating towards the end, and I jumped as the make believe world in these pages seeped into my own. The author strategically puts just enough information in every chapter, all leading up to several major reveals at the end - or I guess more appropriately the beginning....? Sorry that's confusing - but nothing about Miranda's talent was. While a couple questions lie unanswered, the true beauty of this book is in its suspense. As a veteran book reader/movie watcher, I've always prided myself as being a good guesser/bad guy picker outer. But in this story, so intricately woven with many different parts, there wasn't just one bad guy to choose. Everyone was involved in one way or another, and I found myself second guessing everything. All in all this book was, in case it's not clear, a winner. A not-so typical murder mystery that somehow had the ability to scare, haunt, entice, satisfy, and enchant readers all at once.

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Favorite quotes: “If I were a monster, I'd pretend to be human.” ~~ “We were a town full of fear, searching for answers. But we were also a town full of liars.” ~~ “I feel like the whole world is off balance. Like I'm losing my shit. Like there's this cliff and I don't even realize I'm on the edge.” ~~ “Intention is nice, but it's a thing sometimes based more on hope than on reality.” ~~ “Time isn’t running out. It’s not even real,” he said, and I knew I had lost him—he was lost, circling in his own mind. “It’s just a measure of distance we made up to understand things. Like an inch. Or a mile.”