Book Reviews

The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas

Back with another NetGalley read! I promise that I am reading physical books too. It’s just so easy to turn out the light at night and read on my Kindle. You may recognize Claire Douglas from The Couple at No. 9 or Local Girl Missing (not to be confused with Local Woman Missing). Her newest book, The Girls Who Disappeared, publishes in January of 2023!

The Story

“Claire Douglas is a mistress at weaving the reader into a web of domestic deceit.”–Jane Corry, author of The Dead Ex

A journalist’s life is threatened when she investigates the truth about a mysterious car crash that happened twenty years earlier in this gripping thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Couple at Number 9 and Just Like the Other Girls.

A car accident.

Three missing girls.

A twenty-year mystery.

A woman on the verge of discovering the truth . . .

In a rural Wilshire town lies the Devil’s Corridor–a haunted road which has witnessed eerie happenings, from unexplained deaths to the sounds of a child crying in the night.

In this bucolic stretch of Southwest England famous for its otherworldly sites, nothing is more puzzling than the Olivia Rutherford case. Four girls were driving home. After their car crashed only one–Olivia–was found.

What happened to the girls who disappeared? On the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy, journalist Jenna Halliday has arrived in Wiltshire to cover the case. The locals aren’t happy with this outsider determined to dig into the past. Least of all Olivia.

Soon, Jenna starts receiving menacing notes. The locals have made it clear she’s not welcome. But someone is going to make her leave one way or another. Jenna’s been warned: she must get out of this town before she suffers a dark fate . . . and becomes another mystery attached to this place.

My Thoughts

I’m kind of obsessed with The Girls Who Disappeared. It was almost five stars for me! I haven’t had very many of those this year. It was a pleasant surprise in a very good way.

This book is told from two perspectives, plus some “random” chapters dispersed throughout. Jenna Halliday has been sent out to record a podcast about the missing girls and the case now that it has been a full twenty years since the disappearance. Some people are fairly quick to help whereas others are less than welcoming.

Olivia is the only girl remaining from the accident, having been pinned in place from the crash. She’s in her mid-30s, living at home with her mother, still in the town that has held her responsible for the missing girls.

It feels like there are a lot of characters, and multiple different plot lines throughout the book. My best recommendation: KEEP READING. This is a book that wraps up in the end such a mind-blowing way. I can’t even imagine the sticky notes planning Claire Douglas must have done to keep it all moving correctly and adequately aligned in the end.

The Girls Who Disappeared will be available wherever you buy books on January 10, 2023, but you can pre-order your copy now!

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