Village of the Lost Girls was a beautifully atmospheric mystery set around the Pyrenees, with a wonderfully descriptive sense of place and the claustrophobic feel of a small town living with tragedy.

Two girls go missing... 5 years later one turns up alive. But Ana is traumatized and finds it difficult to remember details that may help find her friend Lucia.
Sara Campos, one of the investigators, is determined to unravel Ana’s memory and avoid the mistakes that plagued the initial case.

The story is imbued throughout with a melancholic sense of loss.
The author draws his characters carefully and with detail. The mystery element is clever with unexpected moments and a locked in feel about the town where evil lurks in plain sight.

It is character driven and emotive with an ending that resonates and overall was a very good read indeed.

Recommended.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The premise for this book was very intriguing - it sounded like it would have 'Broadchurch' vibes and there are indeed similarities between the two in terms of content and tone. But unfortunately, it just didn’t grab me personally and I ended up DNF'ing this. The pace was just a little too slow and whilst there were some interesting elements to the mystery being developed I just didn't feel especially compelled to continue, especially given the length of the book. I suspect this might be more about me being the wrong reader for this - or going in with the wrong expectations - than anything to do with the book itself.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Quercus Books and the author, Agustin Martinez, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of Village of the Lost Girls in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
I thought this book provided a good quick read. The imagery was very descriptive. The storyline was written well with intriguing characters. Definitely draws you into the plot.
Worth a read.

I enjoyed this book, although I found it hard to keep track of the many characters and the constantly flipping narrative between them. You can tell that the book has been translated from Spanish as sometimes the wording doesn't seem quite right and is often stilted but that didn't detract from the plot.

Thank you to netgalley and Quercus books for providing me with an arc of this book for an honest review.
I love it when a tagline grabs your attention and straight away you know you have to read it: Two went missing. One returned. The hunt for the other begins.

Ana and Lucia were eleven year old friends when they disappeared walking home from school one day. But five years later, Ana is discovered badly injured but alive after a car crash. The race is on to figure out the case and find Lucia, dead or alive.

The book takes place in the Spanish village of Monteperdido "This was a walled village, built to protect itself from outsiders" The village is filled with shady characters, with friends and neighbours turning against one another. And it is up to outsider detective Sara Campos to get under the skin of the villagers and work out who is telling the truth.

The setting of the book, the Spanish Pyrenees mountains felt like another character in the book. The descriptions of the nature, the valleys and gorges, the unforgiving terrain, gave another element to the story. "The two faces of Monteperdido. Within a few weeks, this valley teaming with life would be frozen. Dead. Once the summer ended, the trees would lose their leaves, the river would freeze over, the animals would retreat into the mountains, the houses would be covered by a mantle of snow. Everything hibernating. And, buried beneath the snow, all the secrets people refused to bring out into the open"

Some unpleasant subjects such as peadophilia come up and it was uncomfortable reading at times. This was a slow burner. Sometimes complicated but always intriguing.

The story in the book was a slow burner at the start, it took me a while to get in to it but once I did I needed to find out who was the culprit. Sara and Santiago are brought to Monteperdido to help solve a mystery Five years earlier Ana and Lucia disappeared on the way home from school. A car has crashed, the driver has been killed but the passenger turns out to be Ana. But where is Lucia? Sara and Santiago are not welcomed by the natives, all of whom have their own secrets. Ana has very hazy memories of her time away and cannot pinpoint where Lucia is being kept. Add to this a village where some of the occupants, such as Lucias family, want answers and the rest of the occupants just want the police to leave them alone and forget it.
I enjoyed the descriptions of the surrounding countryside, Montperdido, the mountains and the weather are almost characters in their own right.

I'm sorry to say but this book didn't work out for me. I liked the premise of the story and it felt in the beginning as this could be a good book. However, the book's story never really truly lifted from the ground, it just plodded along. Since this book is almost 500 pages long did it feel like the story just went on and on and on and not much happened. Two girls went missing and one returned and now every male person in the book is a suspect.

I would say that the first half of the book is the best. Then, my interested started to decline and I started to skim the book to get to the end. Was it worth it, well it was good to get closure. In hindsight should I perhaps stopped reading much much earlier. A hint perhaps was the fact that I never connected with the characters in the book, never felt them come alive. The writing is not at all bad, I was just not moved by the story one bit.

So, I will end this review by saying that I was the wrong reader. Many people like this book and if you do think the premise of the book sounds good, go for it.

A great story line with brilliant main characters.. I read this book in one sitting as I couldn't put it down.

Agustin Martinez writes a chilling, multilayered and intense mystery set in the menacing icy and snowy mountainous peaks of the Spanish Pyrenees, where the small remote poverty stricken village of Monteperdido is located. Five years ago, the village suffered a devastating loss that haunted and reverberated amongst all those that resided there. After leaving school, two 11 year old girls, friends Ana and Lucia, vanished wihout trace, all attempts to locate them fail. Now in the present, there has been a car crash with a fatality, but inside the car is the injured but patently still alive Ana, who is rushed to hospital. This triggers a new investigation to discover what happened to Ana and find the still missing Lucia. Given the mistakes made in the original police hunt for the girls, officers from the Crimes Against Children Unit from Madrid arrive, Sara Campos and Santiago Bain, to work with the local police.

Sara is burdened with her own personal issues and her emotional response to the abductions threatens to overwhelm her. Ana is plagued with memory issues and is deeply traumatised. The villagers put up a wall of silence making it difficult to make any progress in identifying who abducted the girls. The repercussions of Ana's return on both girls families and others in the village is laid bare, Caston is determined, and willing to stop at nothing when it comes to finding his daughter. A detailed claustrophobic picture of Monteperdido emerges, those that dwell there, their secrets, relationships, crimes, and the intrigue. Martinez is terrific in conveying such a strong sense of location with his rich and vibrant descriptions. Whilst the pacing of the novel feels uneven, this is an engrossing and twisted compelling mystery, with a strong underlying sense of loss and is highly atmospheric. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

Two young girls, Ana and Lucia, disappear from the village of Monteperdido. Five years later Ana is found wounded but alive in a car accident. Thus reopening the case of the captured girls and a race begins to find Lucia. Where is she and is she even still alive?

Village of the Lost Girls tells the story of Inspector Sara Campos and her boss Santiago's expedition to investigate the disappearance and find Lucia. Combating uncooperative villagers and Lucia's own father, whose impatience is driving a wedge in the investigation, Campos has a real task at hand. I really enjoyed Sara's narrative as the protagonist, she suffers to keep herself going throughout the hardest times during the case and I really rooted for her throughout. The countryside was such a unique setting for a crime novel and it made it all the more interesting. I enjoyed the originality of the novel although at times I found myself becoming uninterested as parts dragged on. Overall, I did enjoy the book and would recommend. it..

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, Quercus Books and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Anna and Lucia goes missing on their way home from school. Five years later a car crash in the hills of the Pyrenees, the driver is dead and the passenger is alive and rushed to hospital. The passenger is Anna who went missing five years ago.
The story is set in Monteperdido a small village in the peaks of the Pyrenees. The home of the two missing girls. Enter Sarah Campos and her boss Santiago Bain who head up the department Crimes Against Children. It is their job to find out where Anna has been and bring home Lucia alive. The clock is ticking.
This book gripped me from the start but then waned and halfway through picked up again. There are plenty of suspects and i had no idea who the abducter was until they were revealed. This is a town full of secrets which have been buried for far too long. I would recommend this book almost four stars.
I would like to thank the author, Netgalley and Quercus Books for the ARC of this book in return for giving an honest review .

This is very much on the model of 'Broadchurch' - one of those stories where a sexual crime takes place against children and everyone in the small village is under suspicion. The writing - or translation? - felt very flat to me and failed to generate the requisite excitement and involvement. A merely ok book, neither worst nor best in the genre.

A great tense read! Full of gripping moments and twists and turns.
The story was exciting to read and the characters were fleshed out well.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of Village of the Lost Girls, a stand alone set in the mountain village of Monteperdido in northeastern Spain.

Five years ago two eleven year old girls, Ana Montrell and Lucía Castán disappeared without trace from the village of Monteperdido and despite a massive manhunt they were never found. Now a car accident has killed the driver and injured the passenger, a sixteen year old girl identified as Ana Montrell. Given the failings of the initial investigation Inspector Santiago Baín and Assistant Inspector Sara Campos of the Policía Nacional are drafted in to lead the hunt for Lucía and her kidnapper.

I enjoyed Village of the Lost Girls which has a good mystery and several unexpected twists. It is a multi stranded novel concentrating not only on the hunt for Lucía but the effect Ana’s return has on the two families in particular and the wider village as a whole and, as with all good procedurals, uncovers a slew of unrelated crimes. I found the actual hunt and associated crimes quite gripping but I feel that they sometimes got bogged down in superfluous philosophising which took the edge off the intensity and sense of urgency the author manages well at other times.

The characterisation is in the novel is excellent from the flaky Sara Campos to the extremely driven Joaquim Castán, both of whom are not very likeable in their own ways but are instantly recognisable as real. Joaquim is the parent driven to extremes through the impotence of being unable to protect his daughter. Sara gets too involved in her cases, over empathising to the detriment of her health. The village of Monteperdido is almost a character in its own right. Having recently spent time in a similar village in Italy I felt that I could really picture it and its insular society where it’s a completely different way of living from my urban comfort.

Village of the Lost Girls is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

The Village of Lost Girls had me gripped right from the start. Set in the Pyrenees mountains in an atmospheric snowy small town, two eleven year old girls go missing, both only 11 years old, friends and neighbours. The book flashes forward five years later, someone notices a car crash off the side of the cliff and one of the girls Ana is inside the car, alive but hurt. The case of the missing girls gets re-opened, there are many questions for Ana and the hunt to find Lucia starts again. 

The Village of Lost Girls is very character driven, you hear from lots of different characters throughout the book from the police, Sara, Santiago and Victor, the parents of both the missing girls, the missing girls, other family members and members of the Monteperdido community. It is a very in depth and thorough missing person's mystery. I really liked the fact that the main police detective was a woman, Sara. She was battling her own demons with strange dreams and not being able to sleep. She was so determined and hard working throughout the book to get Lucia back, even if she took a wrong turn or a false lead she never gave up hope and kept on trying. She was a very strong female lead character and I really liked the way she was portrayed, the way she worked and figured things out. Although throughout the novel you read from lots of other character perspectives I never felt like it was confusing. Each person had a strong character, so I could picture all of them very clearly. Although some of the names were a bit confusing at first I soon got used to who was who. 

I really loved where the book was set, up in the snowy Pyrenees mountains, it gave the novel a really creepy, cold and harsh landscape, which made me feel chilly and eerie the description of the landscape was just beautiful throughout the book. 

"The glacier was melting in the summer heat. Ice sheets fractured with a soft crack, and a think trickle of water spurted from the sheer face of the mountain that towered above the village and gave it its name: Monteperdido-the Lost Mountain." 

For a mystery thriller I felt like this was quite a long book, however every time I felt like it was lulling a bit more drama was unveiled, there was certainly a good amount of tension throughout the novel. I was always gunning for Sara Campos to find Lucia and catch whoever  kidnapped her and Ana. I was really invested in the story and characters, I never really guessed who the kidnapper could be either and was shocked by the ending. It felt like reading a real-life investigation as there were so many paths to go down and people to investigate, clues to look into and possible guilty parties to interview. It wasn't a straight forward mystery and that's what I really liked about this novel. It had a lot of depth to it in all senses and although a long book there was enough tension and drama pickled throughout to keep me interested until the very end. 

Overall I really enjoyed reading The Village of Lost Girls, if you like to read mysteries and thrillers that are character driven, atmospheric and well written then this book is most definitely for you. I would actually like to read more of Agustín Martínez's novels and hope that he would write another novel where Sara Campos is the main detective again. This book is one to put on the top of you books to buy in 2019 and I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did.

* Thank you Netgalley & Quercus Books for giving me an advanced copy of this book in an exchange for an honest review *

Unfortunately I just couldn’t click with this book. It was very long winded. I didn’t feel the characters were very strong.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Quercus books for my eARC in exchange for my review

3.5 stars


This felt like a really long book,mostly because in parts it dragged.
Then there were other parts where I raced through 50 pages just to see what happened next.
The whole village set up gave the book a claustrophobic feel,where everyone knows every one,And so suspects everyone.
The story certainly cast suspicion on most of the male characters...I was even willing to bet a female was involved. 
Ana's and Lucias story when they came out were both sad and uplifting....that someone had got them through.

Village of the Lost Girls was a beautifully atmospheric mystery set around the Pyrenees, with a wonderfully descriptive sense of place and the claustrophobic feel of a small town living with tragedy.

Two girls go missing- years later one turns up alive, but Ana is traumatised and finds it difficult to remember details that may help find her friend Lucia. Sara Campos, one of the investigators determines to unravel Ana’s memory and avoid the mistakes that plagued the initial case.

The story is imbued throughout with a melancholic sense of loss, the author draws his characters carefully and with detail. The mystery element is clever with unexpected moments and a locked in feel about the town where evil lurks in plain sight.

It is character driven and emotive with an ending that resonates and overall was a very good read indeed.

Recommended.