An okay thriller set in the Pyrenees in Spain five years after two local village girls have disappeared without a trace. Then there is a car crash in the area, and one of the missing girls, Ana, walks out of it alive, however the driver has died. But where is the other girl, Lucia? Is the driver the kidnapper? Ana is reticent to give anyone up, saying she actually knows nothing after five years. Inspectors Bain and Campos from Madrid are called in, and they find a close-knit community, unwilling to share it's secrets, even if they harbour a criminal amongst them.
Honestly, though the premise was good I found this book hard going at times. Where the setting was amazing and could have led to a really chilling novel the author tended to add unnecessary detail and rambled on...and on. I felt a good chunk of this book could have been cut out to stop readers becoming bored with it and, even though the finale was quite good, by then I found myself beyond caring who had actually committed the crime.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise for this book was very intriguing, and I thought that it would be a fast-paced and suspenseful mystery. But for various reasons, it just didn’t grab me.

I found the first half of the book to be slow-moving and if I’m being completely honest, a little dull. The second half picked up pace, but I couldn’t engage with the writing style and the progression from one character to the next in each chapter was a little confusing - particularly the use of a pronoun in the opening sentences instead of a character name.

The story was intriguing, and it, and the need to find out what happened in the end, were the only things that kept me from abandoning it.

Thank you to Agustín Martínez, Hachette Australia and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Set in a village in the Pyrenees, Village of the Lost Girls is a police procedural about the disappearance of two young girls. Five years after they went missing there is a car crash and one of the missing girls, Ana, is found to be a survivor of the crash.

Inspector Sara Campos comes to Monteperdido with her boss Santiago to investigate the disappearance and lead the search for the other girl, Lucia. The two are quickly confronted by a kind of village omerta as well as with Lucia's father getting impatient with the investigation and trying to take matters into his own hands.

Sara is a damaged individual herself and finds that the case of the missing girls strikes her close to the bone, a matter which deteriorates as the book goes on. As she encounters multiple dead ends she seems to be coming apart, but manages to pull herself together each time. Sara is the kind of protagonist you can really get behind.

Martinez's plot kept me guessing and his description of the Pyrenees countryside and lifestyle was evocative and compelling. It's an unusual setting for a crime novel and I thought it added a great deal to the book.