*5 Stars*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very interesting and I liked the ending. Would recommend.

This story is so sad and so touching. Both characters have a really intriguing story and I loved seeing are they relate with one another. As it's a thriller, I highly recommend going into it without knowing anything. I felt a lot of compassion for both women and I was eager to discover more about them as the story unfolded.

Another book that I found myself struggling to connect with. It took me a while to get into it. I felt like I was reading forever but just not moving forward in the story.
It started picking up around 80%. I only continued reading because I wanted to know what happened to Edie.
This one wasn't for me, I'm afraid.

Thank you @NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this.

This book broke my heart into a thousand little pieces. Being a mother is the hardest responsibility on this planet and loosing a child must be the most earth shattering, and for our main character Samantha, it is doubly heart breaking since no one remembers her little girl. This book is a mystery but it is such a heartbreaking one, and i recommend everyone reads this book!!!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately The Missing fell flat for me and I felt it was going nowhere. Having read other reviews it seems as there’s no resolution or result to the story and I DNF by 50% and am glad I didn’t continue.

I didn’t like a single character, couldn’t relate to anything or anyone and while it was fast paced and gripping at the beginning few chapters it dragged for the remainder of what I did read.

This is told from the perspective of Samantha and Frances but sadly I just found it to be uninteresting. I did not gel to the characters and found nothing about them to root for. A book such as this needs people to root for and that was fundamentally missing which was a real disappointment.
Everything about this read was just fine. There was nothing electrifying about it and the plot and characters are forgettable. There is a lot of action at the end of the book but it is all lumped in one place and could have done with being spread throughout the whole book.

Written more as a suspense or even general fiction, the book highlights the unfortunate circumstance that socioeconomic status can play in crime. Unfortunately, the plot focuses too much on the events and not enough on character development. Readers are offered a pretty familiar trope and not much in the way of originality. For those accustom to the genre, the big reveal is easily picked up on in earlier chapters. Just an okay read. 2 stars

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC of #TheMissing which was read and reviewed voluntarily by @wayward_readers

I was expecting more of a thriller than this book delivered. I enjoyed the alternating of the POV on every chapter but that didn’t do anything to make the story more dynamic. Overall it was a good idea but for me just didn’t deliver.

Another strong book from Daisy Pearce. It tells the story of Frances, married to William, who both have secrets to hide, and Samantha, searching for her missing daughter, Edie. All of the characters were well drawn and believable in their actions. The pain of Samantha's loss comes through time and time again. The missing children of those without the fancy house or perfect childhood are often overlooked in the media, by the police. This book really conveys this message in many subtle ways - Samantha is portrayed as an inattentive mother, someone who likes a drink and is to be avoided. The author does a great job of showing the flipside to the coin - the frustration of being ignored that leads to seemingly unhinged behaviour, the loneliness and pain of being ignored. A thought-provoking read that the acknowledgement brought home - the list of children who were, in the author's words "were overlooked and underreported" just because they didn't fit a media-perfect demographic. I am ashamed to say I had to Google many of the names. A recommended and worthwhile read.

Great story! I was engaged the entire time. A real page turner. Looking forward to reading more books from this author! Highly recommend!

This was such a good book. A teenager disappeared without a trace, but is she dead or alive.? There were lots of twists along the way, and a very exciting ending. I just kept wanting to read more.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This book is about a teenage girl (Edie) who goes missing and the search for what has happened to her.
The main protagonist's are Edies mother Samantha and Edies (then) boyfriend Williams wife - Frances.

Samantha has never given up hope of finding her daughter again and Frances becomes fascinated in the mystery of what happened to Edie when she comes to stay in the village with her husbands mother.

This book pulled me in a few different directions - did she run away, was she abducted, is she alive or dead? I couldn't stop reading to find out what had happened to troubled Edie.

Tense. Full of suspense. Well paced and written. Twisty enough to keep you reading from the first page until the last. A definite must read.. Pick up this winner of a book. Happy reading!

Along with my love of the Investigation Discovery show, Disappeared, I am instantly drawn to any synopsis like this one - the mystery of a missing young woman. Edie, at fifteen, was a handful, raised along by her young single mother, Samantha. Though Samantha readily admits she's hardly a model mother, she loved her daughter, Her story comes in then and now segments, alongside Frances; story of an imperfect marriage. As their stories converge, they are drawn to one another.

The plot progresses a little too slowly, and while it's easy to feel sympathy for both women, I never really felt connected to either one. The book relies too heavily on telling rather than showing and this only further slows the pace. I will say, the very end of the book does pick up the speed quite a bit and the plot does hold surprises, but they never really felt like the foundation was really there because the side characters are not very deeply developed. Still, the premise of Edie's disappearance drove me to continue on and though it wasn't the gripping read that I wanted it to be, but I never hated it either.

Edie Hudson was no angel, so when she goes missing, nobody really seems to care except for her mother, Samantha. 20 years after Edie disappeared, Samantha has still not given up hope in finding her daughter. One day she meets Frances, who just happens to now be married to William, the boy Edie had been dating when she disappeared. When Frances discovers a photo of her husband and Edie, she is intrigued by the story of this missing girl who nobody seems to miss. What happens next is a much too long, drawn out story that could have been so much better.

The surprise twist ending, honestly didn't even surprise me, it was almost expected. I didn't care for any of the characters, they were all a bit uninteresting and dull. Not sure if this book was meant to be a thriller, nothing really seemed to happen til the end. Most of Samantha's chapters dealt with the past, but gave no real information or details into what may have happened to Edie. Frances' chapters were a tad more interesting, but it felt like the beginning really had nothing to do with the end of the book.

I always appreciate when things wrap up at the end of a book and I'm not left hanging, so that was one thing this book did deliver on for the most part.

Thank you to Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK for the ARC of this book.

Samantha’s daughter Edie went missing 18 years ago. Edie was 15 years old troubled child. But did she not deserve to be found? For the neighbours and the authorities, the answer was yes. She was never found.
Frances is married to William and lives Swindon. They go to Lewes to look after Mimi, William’s mother, who had an accident. She meets Samantha and feels for her missing daughter. Frances feels drawn about Edie’s missing and starts asking questions. But some mysteries are better left buried because some of them are precious than life!

This is my first book by the author and I loved how she portrayed how as a society judge people based on their social and economic status. Edie’s disappearance did not raise any eyebrows. Even the police said “Girls like Edie… come back after some stint on road”. There was no help from the authorities or the neighbours.

The author vividly painted the picture of a mother who lived in hope. She did not just lose her daughter but everything along with it. She appears distraught, lost friends and job. We can see a lot about Samantha but not so much about Frances.

The book is a slow burner. It takes time to build upon the story and the mystery.

The Missing is a dark tale of judgement, lies and being cocooned in hope forever only to drain the life force out you.

My rating 3.5 stars.

Thank you, NetGalley and Amazon Publishing for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

A really good read. I felt so sorry for Samantha the whole way through. I did not like Edie but I can empathise with Sam. The thought of your daughter going missing is unbearable. The twists in the plot were really well written and well thought out.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Two women thrown together over the disappearance of fifteen year old Edie, The Missing is quite a slow-burner to start with but picks up pace towards the end.

Told from the perspective of both women from both then; when Edie first went missing, and now, The Missing is well written but I found it quite flat. It's not that I disliked it, I just didn't find it particularly enjoyable and I wasn't really intrigued as to what had happened to Edie.

Single mum Samantha is a chain-smoking loner with her own anger issues making her account unreliable. She is clearly disillusioned against the truth of her daughter's behaviour and personality, trying time and time again to quiet the voice in her own head which tells her how she really felt about Edie and her disappearance. Her behaviour is erratic and obsessive as she claws for the truth.

Frances has a past we don't really learn about in anything more than brief snippets of details or memories. There's no real explanation of her past and I didn't feel it really added much to her character. I felt like she was the character I liked the most but unfortunately her story isn't nearly as detailed as Samantha's.

There are a few different "suspects" in this book and it feels very slow as Samantha works her way through each of them to try and figure out what people know.

I wasn't a fan of the long chapters in this book. I personally felt quite frustrated to turn the page to a new chapter only for my kindle to tell me "time left in chapter: 52 minutes"! I think they made the book feel more of a slog and given the breaks in each chapter, could definitely have been chopped down to smaller chapters. The book is quite a heavy read with desperate, depressed Samantha's accounts taking up the majority of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Daisy Pearce and Amazon Publishing UK for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 starw rounded up to 4

Fifteen year old Edie Hudson disappears without trace. It's now twenty years later and Samantha (Edie's mother) still does not know what happened to her daughter. Frances is interested in what happened to Edie. She discovered that her husband, William knew Edie. Thrntwomwomen accidentally meet and join forces to try and find out what happened to Edie.

The story is told from Samantha and Frances's perspectives. There seemed to be quite a lot of backstory at the beginning of the book but the more you read the more you understand why this was necessary. The story flips between then and now. I liked the friendship that developed between the two women. The ending was a surprise. There's some good twists to keep you interested.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Amazon Publishing UK and the author Daisy Pearce for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Marriages aren't always what they seem and neither are people. Who can you really trust? Who should you really trust?

This book is told from two points of view: Frances, who seems to have a deeply troubled past and is married to William who "rescued" her although might be having an affair now, and Samantha, whose 15-year-old deeply troubled daughter vanished without a trace 20 years earlier. Frances and William are in his hometown because his mother, who lives with his closeted brother, has a severe fall, and while there, Frances discovers that William was dating Edie when she disappeared. Can Frances help Samantha finally get some answers after all these years of purgatory?

I really liked the friendship that develops between Frances and Samantha. It's nice to see a friendship between two women that isn't torn apart because of a relationship with a man or because of jealousy. I also really liked that there was just enough backstory for us to understand the motives of most of the characters even if we lack full explanations.

This was definitely a quick, fun read to start off the summer, although maybe not as heart-pumping suspenseful as it could have been for a thriller. I would have liked a bit more teasing out the whodunnit, since most (but not all) was easily guessed very early on.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the arc. It has not influenced my opinion.