Highly enjoyed this one! It kept me engaged throughout and was a joy to read, would certainly recommend!

I just found many places in this book where I actually rolled my eyes. I did not like the mom. She is overbearing and acts ridiculous with people trying to help her. I wanted to pinch her ear off in places. BE NICE!

Every parent's worst nightmare. Very suspenseful, very likeable characters. Would recommend. Solid 3.5 stars.

This book was just okay for me. I think it would’ve been better if it had just been written in 1 perspective but the imaginative portion was weird.

I was a little disappointed in this one. I have enjoyed other books by this author though, so will keep reading her books!

I received a free e-copy of Where She Went by Kelly Simmons from NetGalley for my honest review.

This is a story of a mother (Maggie) and daughter (Emma) I loved that the story was told from dual points of view but felt like the story fell a little flat for me. Maggie's daughter, Emma, goes missing from college and there is nothing she won't do to find out what happened.

My struggle with this book was with the characters. I just couldn't get connect with them at all and I got tired and even irritated with the mother.

I am a big fan of books that alternate chapters of unknown/crossing perspectives. In this case it was between a mother looking for her missing college student daughter and the daughter explaining what had happened to her. At times it was slightly predictable, but it kept my attention the entire time.

Book 14/52 in 2022. This one was an olllllld ARC from @netgalley (it published in 2019 😬😬😬). It was giving me Reconstructing Amelia vibes at first - a book I LOVED - but I found myself way more interested in one timeline over the other, so much so that I would honestly skim through the chapters for the timeline I wasn’t into. And then the ending. Nope. Nope nope nope. It was not for me at all.

If the synopsis sounds interesting, check it out, but this one missed the mark for me!

Suspenseful, Where She Went hooks you from the beginning and does not let go until the very end.

Synopsis:
Her only daughter her just gone away to college, and Maggie O’Farrell knows she’s turning into one of those helicopter parents she used to mock. Worrying constantly, texting more than she should, even occasionally dropping by the campus “just to say hi.” But Maggie can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen to Emma. And then, just as Maggie starts to relax, her daughter disappears.

The clues are disturbing. An empty dorm room where Emma was supposedly living. A mysterious boy described as Future Husband in her phone. Dormmates who seems more sinister than friendly. As Maggie combs over the campus looking for signs of her daughter, she learns more about Emma’s life than she ever thought possible.

So much potential, so little payoff. Terrible ending.

I'm not sure what is up with the books I've been choosing lately, but so many of them have absolutely hysterical people and utterly unlikable characters. This one features a neurotic mother who shrieks and carries on constantly, and a group of icky, terrible, nasty college students.

As I've said before, I am always enticed by the premise of someone going missing. Maggie gets a visit from the police who tell her that her college freshman daughter Emma has disappeared, no one has seen her. Maggie zooms over to Emma's dorm room and finds it completely empty of anything belonging to her daughter. Her three roommates are unreachable, and no one seems to have any idea what happened to Emma (or who she even is for the most part). As Maggie is the widow of a police officer, she knows that it is critical to investigate quickly and she feels that the local police aren't doing their job. I actually could have forgiven Maggie's frenetic running around yelling "take fingerprints! put out an Amber alert!" (even though she should have known that neither was productive or possible), but the ending of this story is just SO BAD.

The setup of alternating between Maggie's investigation into Emma's whereabouts in the present and the lead up to the disappearance from Emma's POV in the past works to the point where the two converge. Then it just becomes absolutely unbelievable and stupid. For all of the lead up to us finally discovering what happened to Emma, and then...[ she had gone to confront her professor/his wife about his involvement in some sugar daddy possibly prostitution thing at the college and she gets so hysterical that they call an ambulance and now she is in a mental hospital. Really? So we're going with the maybe-she's-crazy solution? Or maybe just sleep deprivation, ok whatever, the end. (hide spoiler)]

Overall this book did not work for me, I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator spoke so incredibly slowly that I sped it up to 2.25x and it still seemed like regular fast talking to me. This isn't one that I'd recommend as an audiobook because the shrieking and paranoia are over the top and the narration is sloooooow.

I did not like this book that much. The story felt a bit unbelievable to me and the characters were way too blah.

My Review:
This was my first read by this author and she sure did not disappoint. I would definitely read more of her books.

Ok, let’s get into the book. When I read the blurb I knew immediately I had to read this book. A college student gone missing is my cup of tea. I had to know what happened to her and what the reason was that she went missing. So we have the plot, next up now is the characters. I love how the author alternates the chapters between each main character. I love getting different points of view and it seems like a lot of authors are doing this in their books now. So my thoughts on both of the main characters go back and forth as each chapter passed. In one chapter I would really like that character but in the next chapter I would not. Next up is that ending. The ending was good but It wasn’t wrapped up neatly in a bow which I would have preferred. I still had many questions that were left unanswered. Overall though I thought the book was good and well written. I look forward to reading more of this authors books.

Between the plot, characters and all the twists in this book it made it an easy and fast read. I would definitely recommend it and happily give it 4 Hearts❤️❤️❤️❤️.

What would you do if your daughter disappears? This book is a parents worse nightmare. Kelly Simmons is a masterful writer at bringing a story together and keeping the reader on the edge of your seat til the end! Highly recommended!

The description for Where She Went makes it seem like it will be a fast paced, character driven suspense and while I did manage to read it fairly quickly the characters were really lacking and the suspense was not as suspenseful as I was hoping it would be.

The book had an interesting enough premise where a mother leans that her daughter is missing from her college dorm room followed by chapters where we see exactly what happened with said daughter. And the mystery the daughter was trying to figure out was actually pretty interesting and seemed like it was a nice, big scandal.

Eventually, the two time lines meet up.

But the mom was so freaking annoying, the depiction of college life from the daughter's point of view seemed very off, and the ending was blah.

I would not recommend this book.

Your daughter just moving away to college and then turning up missing, is absolutely the worst fabric of my nightmares. As the investigation progresses and more lies and half truths are uncovered we begin to wonder what has happened to the college girl. I can not stop considering this scenario and the ending. I received an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

This novel had an interesting premise, so I was very interested. A woman's daughter, Emma, acts as an investigator and journalist to unravel some mysteries at her school. There's intrigue and mystery, initially. I enjoyed the daughter's point of view, and why she did what she did.

However, the tone changes and when the novel is driven by the mother, Maggie, it loses some of its impact. I greatly thank Sourcebooks and Kelly Simmons for the opportunity to review this novel. I enjoyed her writing but the novel really fell short. It seemed like the story had some great ideas and didn't know where to go with it. It could have had more suspense and gone a little darker.

2/5 stars

I am a big fan of Kelly Simmons, but this book was not my favorite. I think if it was classified as Woman's Fiction and not a thriller I would be going in with different expectations and would have enjoyed it more.

Maggie has become an empty nester with her daughter a freshman in college and her cop husband deceased. Maggie tries not to become a helicopter parent, but she has a feeling that something with her daughter isn't right. A cop knocks on her door and tells her her daughter is missing. Maggie doesn't trust the police to do their jobs and heads to the college. She finds her daughter's things missing in her dorm room. Maggie starts her own search.

This story is told in the POV of Maggie and Emma. Emma's story is in the past that leads up to her missing and Maggie's is in the present. Maggie is a strong female who does what it takes to find her daughter. Thank you to Kelly Simmons, Source Landmark Books and Netgalley for an ecopy of this book and this is my honest review.

I wanted more of a tied up conclusion from this book than I got, but aside from that, I really enjoyed this! The parallel story telling really worked for the situation, and for me as the reader. I loved both Emma and her mother in different ways. Really really excellent book.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Where She Went... I was excited for this book but to be honest I was really let down. It took quite a while for me to get through it and I was waiting for the psychological thriller to start.