When sixteen-year-old Zoe does not return from her overnight summer camp, its effects are felt throughout the entire community. Was Zoe's death an accident or did someone kill her? I really liked the buildup, the use of the quick flashbacks and text messages to move the story forward, but the final reveal was a bit of a letdown for me. I read psychological thrillers regularly and am able to guess the ending more often than not, but I still enjoy the plot progression. I missed that this time.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

The Girl Who Never Came Home is an interesting read by Nicole Trope.

Written in many povs, the reader learns how quite a few people disliked the popular Zoe. Every chapter shows us the real Zoe and the way she hurt and alienated people.

So what happened to her?

Her death affects everyone involved forever. Their lives will never be the same.

It's definitely a Jodi Picault type read. There's intrigue and suspense throughout. There are secrets and more secrets.

I enjoy that the mystery of her death is unveiled before the end, yet there's still plenty of things to happen to those involved.

The Girl Who Never Came Home is definitely an a good book. This Nicole Trope read involves the many layers of the multiple people affected by one girl's death.

Zoe Bloom went away to camp but sneaked away one night. She never returned. Her body was discovered and now her friends, family and others in the local community assess how they really felt about the beautiful but manipulative teenager.
We all make connections with people and present a certain image of ourelves to others and on social media. The Girl Who Never Came Home cleverly uses this concept to explore the complex relationships within families, friendship groups and online.
Zoe is a typical teenager. We see her through the perspectives of other characters including her mother Lydia and sister Jessie as well as her best friend Shayna and teacher Ms Fischer. These characters struggle to reconcile their grief and love with the reality of their experiences with Zoe.
The main characters have been hiding personal secrets or information about Zoe's final hours. This leads to suspicious behaviour and maintains our interest as we want to discover which elements of the plot have relevance to Zoe's death. There are short chapters from an unknown perspective that feel more malevolent and raise the anticipation.
I enjoyed the use of social media and our online presence in the plot. As a parent, this is something I am concerned about for my own children. I also felt particularly drawn to Lydia and Jessie's viewpoints as their feelings are so well expressed even though it is not written in the first person (unlike Shayna and Ms Fischer's chapters)
The Girl Who Never Came Home is an intriguing mystery with plenty of drama and emotion.

While I was grateful for the opportunity to read a copy of this book, in all honesty I can’t say I enjoyed it.
I found it too confusing alternating between four characters.. while I wanted to find out what happened to Zoe I do confess that I didn’t finish it.

Lydia is immediately a sympathetic character, the loss of a child is every parents worst nightmare, and Trope’s portrayal of a grieving mother’s volatile emotional state feels authentic. Having already lost her daughters father to cancer, this tragedy is almost more than Lydia can bear, and her grief is compounded by the questions that surround Zoe’s death.

Like most sixteen year olds Zoe was neither all one thing, nor the other - though often thought of as lively, bright, and charming, she could also be rebellious, selfish, petty, and mean-spirited. As the police investigate her untimely death they must consider all the possibilities- could it be suicide, and accident or murder?

In the aftermath, Zoe’s sister, Jessie; her best friends, Shayna and Becca; the teachers supervising the camp, Bernadette and Paula, among others, are forced to examine their conscience. Trope’s portrayal of each distinct character is convincing, and as each considers what role, if any, they played in Zoe’s demise, secrets are revealed, edging the reader closer to discovering the truth.

Trope thoughtfully touches on issues common in adolescence including friendship, bullying, eating disorders, dating, risk-taking and the use of social media, but it’s the often mercurial and complicated relationships between mothers and daughters that are in focus. With the revelations that come after Zoe’s death, Lydia can’t help but wonder if she knew her daughter at all, a feeling exacerbated when she learns that Jessie too has been keeping secrets.

The Girl Who Never Came Home is an emotional, suspenseful, and compulsive read. I think it would particularly be an excellent choice for a mother-daughter book club, sure to provoke much discussion.

The book opens with the death of a young girl and then explores all the repercussions of this event on those around her as well as solving the mystery of the death itself.

One death and so many people are affected - her parents, her sister, teachers, friends and the greater community to one extent or another feel the grief. Each chapter of the book describes events from a different person's point of view and the author does a brilliant job of building each separate character. It also makes the book into compulsive reading as you want to find out what each person does next.

Of course it is also a tear jerker. Trope introduces everything she can to make you reach for the tissues right down to the death of a family pet! She covers a wide range of social issues especially the impact 0n today's teenagers of living their lives online. She also shows by the end of the book that it is possible to survive tragedy and even to come out the other side and rediscover a happy life.

Nicely written and extremely readable. Recommended.

I was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an independent review.

When 16 year old Zoe goes missing in a school trip and then is discovered dead there is going to be a story.
What a story it turns out to be. Narrated chapter by chapter by a different one of the characters, it was cleverly structured. The characters each have their own back story and they interweave sometimes.

Gripping, emotionally charged and intriguing, I really enjoyed this book. For me, the one thing it highlighted was that one’s actions always have consequences.
4.5 stars

Book Description:

They find her just as the sun is beginning to rise in the early morning mist. They had begun at dawn, the group of searchers keen to get going. A missing child spurred everyone on. In the end, it was a flash of colour, a bright neon pink that caught her eye. They had been looking for pink.

Nothing tests your faith like being a mother. The first time your children walk to school alone, their first sleepover, when they finally fly the nest. As a parent, you have to believe that everything will be OK.

It’s why, when Lydia’s sixteen-year-old daughter Zoe goes on a school camping trip, she has no idea of the horrors that will unfold. It’s why, when Lydia gets a call saying that her daughter has disappeared, she refuses to give up.

As she searches the mountains, her voice hoarse from calling Zoe’s name, she imagines finding her. She envisions being flooded with relief as she throws her arms around her child, saying, ‘you gave us such a scare’. She pictures her precious girl safely tucked in bed that evening.

It’s why, when they find Zoe’s body, Lydia can barely believe it. It is unthinkable. Her little girl has gone.

Something terrible happened, she is sure of it. Something made Zoe get out of her sleeping bag in the middle of the night, walk out of the warmth and safety of the cabin, into the darkness of the mountains. Driven by the memory of her youngest child, Lydia needs to find out the truth. What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t?

A heartbreaking, redemptive and beautifully crafted novel which brings to life a mother’s worst nightmare, questioning how well we ever really know the people we love the most. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Kerry Fisher and Liane Moriarty will be blown away by this stirring, unforgettable tale.

BLOG TOUR REVIEW

Review for 'The Girl Who Never Came Home' by Nicole Trope.

Read and reviewed via NetGalley for Bookouture publishers and Bookouture anonymous

Publication date 4th November 2020

This is the first book that I have read by this author.

I was originally drawn to this book by its eye catching and beautiful cover and intriguing synopsis. The book was advertised with the statement that fans of Jodi Picoult and Kerry Fisher will be blown away by it. I'm a MASSIVE fan of both of these authors so it will be interesting to see if the story lives up to this. I must admit I was also biased due to the publisher being Bookouture. I have yet to read a book published by Bookouture that I haven't enjoyed. Hopefully this won't be the first... Watch this space! (Written before I started reading the book).

This novel consists of a prologue, 33 chapters and an epilogue. The chapters are medium in length so possible to read 'just one more chapter' before bed...OK, I know yeah right, but still just in case!

This book is based in Sydney, USA 🇺🇸.

This book is written in a mix of first and third person perspective and the main protagonists are Shayna (Zoe's best friend and first person perspective ), Bernadette (Zoe's teacher and first person perspective), Jessie (Zoe's sister and third person perspective) and Lydia (Zoe's mum and third person perspective ). I enjoy books written in both first and third person with several protagonists as it let's you see the bigger picture of what's going on and you get to know more characters more, what they are thinking and what they are doing. You alse get to bond more in first person perspective with the character. It feels like you get to see the whole picture and not miss out in anything.

This book is extremely well written and the fact that the author has used both first person and third person perspective as well as many protagonists could have been a disaster but it has worked fantastically!!! It has been brilliant to see so much of the picture and see how so many characters are thinking and feeling.

The storyline itself is a slow burner and I think of it hadn't had been it may jot have worked as well. The author slowly feeds you information throughout so you can rule people out or build on what they know. It really did fit the plot perfectly. It is packed with secrets, suspense, lies, revelations, shocks and surprises. I didn't work out who the mystery character talking was until about 75% which is brilliant, nothing worse than working it all out straight away. I only worked it out then as the author wanted the reader too and even then there was still some mystery left to it. I think the flashbacks throughout also worked really well and it was interesting to discover all the bits together. It felt very much like working on a jigsaw but having the last piece withheld from you until just the right time and then BOOM everything makes sense.

Ahhh... Now onto the characters!!! What a mixed bunch we have here! Again, the story wouldn't have worked otherwise. My thoughts really did go out to both Jessie, Lydia and Leanne. I did feel sorry for Bernadette but she seemed to be the type of teacher who wouldn't have been on my favourites list if I'm honest. Unfortunately, and I now this will sound horrid but hey its an honest review, I didn't like Zoe and I can't say I felt at all sorry for her. I probably won't go as far as to say she deserved it..... Mmmm.... BUT she was a full on bully and after being bullied myself I can't scrape any sympathy for her. She had a nice life with a nice family so, yeah, no excuse for being a mega female dog!! Anyway, moving on, the characters were all very well developed and did work well together. It was interesting to see how they all developed throughout the storyline and I hope that Jess finds her happiness.

Overall a slow burning psychological jigsaw puzzle packed with suspense, lies, drama and much more!!

Genres covered in this novel include Suspense, Coming-Of-Age Story and Psychological Fiction amongst others.

I would recommend this book to the fans of the above as well as .

301 pages.

This book is £1.99 to purchase on kindle via Amazon or free which I think is an absolute bargain for this book!!!

Rated 5 /5 (I enjoyed it ) on Goodreads, Instagram, Amazon UK and Amazon US BLOG TOUR REVIEW

Review for 'The Girl Who Never Came Home' by Nicole Trope.

Read and reviewed via NetGalley for Bookouture publishers and Bookouture anonymous

Publication date 4th November 2020

This is the first book that I have read by this author.

I was originally drawn to this book by its eye catching and beautiful cover and intriguing synopsis. The book was advertised with the statement that fans of Jodi Picoult and Kerry Fisher will be blown away by it. I'm a MASSIVE fan of both of these authors so it will be interesting to see if the story lives up to this. I must admit I was also biased due to the publisher being Bookouture. I have yet to read a book published by Bookouture that I haven't enjoyed. Hopefully this won't be the first... Watch this space! (Written before I started reading the book).

This novel consists of a prologue, 33 chapters and an epilogue. The chapters are medium in length so possible to read 'just one more chapter' before bed...OK, I know yeah right, but still just in case!

This book is based in Sydney, USA 🇺🇸.

This book is written in a mix of first and third person perspective and the main protagonists are Shayna (Zoe's best friend and first person perspective ), Bernadette (Zoe's teacher and first person perspective), Jessie (Zoe's sister and third person perspective) and Lydia (Zoe's mum and third person perspective ). I enjoy books written in both first and third person with several protagonists as it let's you see the bigger picture of what's going on and you get to know more characters more, what they are thinking and what they are doing. You alse get to bond more in first person perspective with the character. It feels like you get to see the whole picture and not miss out in anything.

Secrets. Suspense. Lies. Revalations. Surprises. Shocks. Slowly feeding information. Slow burner. Flash backs.

Overall

Genres covered in this novel include Suspense, Coming-Of-Age Story and Psychological Fiction amongst others.

I would recommend this book to the fans of the above as well as .

301 pages.

This book is £1.99 to purchase on kindle via Amazon or free which I think is an absolute bargain for this book!!!

Rated 5 /5 (I loved it ) on Goodreads, Instagram, Amazon UK and Amazon US and on over 30 Facebook pages plus my blog on Facebook.

Feel free to add me on Goodreads or follow me on my website or Facebook for more reviews

#TheGirlWhoNeverCameHome #Bookouture #NicolaTrope #NetGalley #BookReview #BlogTour #BooksOnTour
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Author Bio:

Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because, as her professor pointed out, ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’

She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree. In between raising three children, working for her husband and renovating houses, she has published six novels. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

https://www.facebook.com/NicoleTrope/

https://twitter.com/nicoletrope


Buy Links:
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Apple: https://apple.co/3gsiPry
Kobo: https://bit.ly/3k6gbds
Google: https://bit.ly/3fqkmwW

This book was predictable but, I liked it. Zoe, a teenager is missing from a school camp, and soon she is found dead. So many secrets in this story. I liked Lydia, Zoe's mom, a strong lady even after she went through so many things.
Thank you Netgalley for this book.

A good suspenseful mystery. Loved the story, although it did seem to drag part way thru. I also think it was confusing with too many POV's told. I agree with a previous review that it is better fitting for a YA book.

Zoe will forever be 16 years old. She disappeared from a school camping trip. She was later found at the base of a mountain. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

Driven by the memory of her youngest child, Lydia needs to find out the truth. What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t.

This was an extraordinary book. It's more a story about Zoe .. who she was, why she was the way she was, her secrets, her relationships with those around her. It's about her mother .. who has already lost Zoe's father to cancer. How family deaths affected everyone ... Zoe's step-father and especially her sister, Jesse.

Each chapter is a different voice ... her mother ... her sister ... her friends .. her enemies...her teachers .... I was hooked from the first page and my interest didn't wain one iota until the very last page. It's well written, at times emotional. The characters are all expertly drawn, most are teenagers with their own sets of issues. Highly recommend for anyone who just wants a really good read.

Many thanks to the author / Bookouture / Netgalley for the digital copy of this psychological drama. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here as unbiased and entirely my own.

Nicole Trope’s The Girl Who Never Came Home is a hard-hitting, thought-provoking and nail-biting page-turner fans of Jodi Picoult and Diane Chamberlain will not want to miss.

Mothers never stop worrying about their children. From the moment they take their first breath, your mind constantly worries about their safety and well-being. Yet, parents know that they cannot wrap their children up in cotton wool and that they must give them room to make their own mistakes and to make their own choices. As they being to grow older and start taking their first tentative steps into the world, those worries intensify. With a seventeen year old daughter, Lydia is having her fair share of sleepless nights and when Zoe asks her to go on a school camping trip, she says yes even though she doesn’t realise that all of her worst fears and nightmares are about to come true.

When Lydia gets a call that Zoe has disappeared, her world comes crashing down around her ears. Lydia cannot believe that her baby girl is lost to her forever and she vows to find her even if it is the last thing she does. As she searches the mountains, she is relentless in her search for her daughter. She cannot believe that her dear Zoe has been taken from her but she will not rest until her daughter is safe back in her arms. But when Lydia finds her daughter’s body, she cannot believe that her little girl is lost to her forever.

What happened to Zoe? What made her decide to get up in the middle of the night and move away from the safety of the cabin? Lydia has lost her daughter, but she is determined to uncover what really happened that night. Blinded by grief and despair, Lydia begins to search for answers – even if she knows that the truth will continue to break her already shattered heart. Will Lydia discover what really happened to Zoe? Is she ready for what she is about to uncover? And will finding out the circumstances behind Zoe’s death bring her peace? Or will it just cause her further anguish and sorrow?

Nicole Trope’s The Girl Who Never Came Home is a heart-breaking read that brought me to tears on plenty of occasions. Nicole Trope is a talented writer who writes sensitively and poignantly about loss, grief and tragedy but who also imbues her story with shocking twists and turns that keep readers guessing and turning the pages.

Nicole Trope’s The Girl Who Never Came Home is a highly charged, compassionate and gripping novel that lingers in the mind weeks after the last page is turned.

3.5 stars. This was a good interesting read that pulls at the heartstrings. I did however think it started off very slowly and it took me a while to get into it

The Girl Who Never Came Home by Nicole Trope tells the story of sixteen-year-old Zoe Bloom who is found dead, after going missing from a school camping trip. Told from multiple perspectives, it becomes apparent that not everyone liked the pretty and popular teenager, and the people that were closest to her all have something to hide about that horrible night.

Believable characters and plenty of suspense and twists and turns along the way as we unravel the devastating truth behind Zoe's death. This story shows us how one person's actions can change many lives. A moving and captivating read, with some very important life lessons. Highly recommend this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Girl Who Never Came Home by Nicole Trope is my second novel by this author after reading and thoroughly enjoying The Nowhere Girl.
16 yr old Zoe Bloom is on a weekend school camping trip and goes missing. A search party later finds her dead from a fall. Told from the points of view of many characters, details are revealed leading up to the tragedy.
This is a gut wrenching drama that is extremely well-written. A riveting tale of how a traumatic event can affect the lives of so many. A difficult subject written with great sensitivity.
Highly Recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to Bookoture and NetGalley for this amazing book.

My nail beds are bleeding due to profusely biting through them while reading this book. You’ll not put this book down. And when you finally do, you’ll wish that this book had never ended.

This book will have you reaching for the tissues many times. Every mothers worst nightmare with so many 'what ifs?' Heartbreaking but so many lessons to be learned from and by teenagers.

EXCERPT: They find her body after twenty-three hours of searching.

She is lying at the bottom of a small outcrop of grey-brown rock. The rock is covered in a slippery green moss and one of the searchers, a woman named Adelaide, almost loses her footing as she peers over the edge despite being a resident of the mountains and a keen hiker. She attributes her near slip to the tears clouding her view. It is a terrible thing to see. The girl lies with one leg slightly angled and her arms above her head, her eyes closed and her arms above her head, her eyes closed and her blonde hair tangled around her face, a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. Her phone is lying in one hand, the screen unbroken.

Unlike her.

ABOUT 'THE GIRL WHO NEVER CAME HOME': Nothing tests your faith like being a mother. The first time your children walk to school alone, their first sleepover, when they finally fly the nest. As a parent, you have to believe that everything will be OK.

It’s why, when Lydia’s sixteen-year-old daughter Zoe goes on a school camping trip, she has no idea of the horrors that will unfold. It’s why, when Lydia gets a call saying that her daughter has disappeared, she refuses to give up.

As she searches the mountains, her voice hoarse from calling Zoe’s name, she imagines finding her. She envisions being flooded with relief as she throws her arms around her child, saying, ‘you gave us such a scare’. She pictures her precious girl safely tucked in bed that evening.

It’s why, when they find Zoe’s body, Lydia can barely believe it. It is unthinkable. Her little girl has gone.

Something terrible happened, she is sure of it. Something made Zoe get out of her sleeping bag in the middle of the night, walk out of the warmth and safety of the cabin, into the darkness of the mountains. Driven by the memory of her youngest child, Lydia needs to find out the truth. What kind of mother would she be if she didn’t?

MY THOUGHTS: I always look forward to a new Nicole Trope book, and 'The Girl Who Never Came Home' is no exception. Trope manages to combine an interesting and realistic storyline that will wrench your heartstrings, particularly if you are a parent, with wonderfully relatable characters.

Having a child go missing is every parent's worst nightmare. Somehow, when you send your child off to school camp, you expect to get that child back. Trope explores what happens when that child doesn't come back, when that child is found dead, and what happens when a death that initially looks accidental, becomes something else. She explores the complicated relationships between teenage girls, between them and their families, between them and the people they 'meet' on social media. She explores the disparity between the the actuality of these girls and the image that they present to the world, the competition between and pecking order in friendships.

The Girl Who Never Came Home is a delicious, sad, emotional, exciting read, one that will have you glued to the pages as the possible identity of Zoe's killer becomes numerous as secrets are revealed and lies exposed.

The story is told from the viewpoints of Lydia, Zoe's mother; Shayna, Zoe's best friend; Bernadette, the teacher; and Jessie, Zoe's sister. Detectives Gold and Holland are the lead investigators and the tragedy takes place just outside Leura in the Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia. I have been there and it is spectacularly beautiful, but it would also be extremely easy to get lost, especially in the middle of the night if you were alone. But it seems that Zoe wasn't alone . . .

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

#TheGirlWhoNeverCameHome #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because-as her professor pointed out- ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’ She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree in Children’s Literature. After the birth of her first child she stayed home full time to write and raise children, renovate houses and build a business with her husband.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Bookouture via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Girl Who Never Came Home by Nicole Trope for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

16 year old Zoe goes on a school camping trip and ends up dead. Was it an accident or intentional? Zoe is the type of girl everybody wants to be like, but she was also a girl disliked by many.

I really enjoyed The Nowhere Girl by Nicole Trope, so I had high hopes for this one. I just didn't care for any of the characters. I also guessed who was responsible for her death pretty early on. I also did not feel an ounce of sympathy for Zoe. Granted, she didn't deserve to die, but she was downright horrible. I know teenagers can be difficult and sometimes cruel, but she was just mean. Her mother was just as much to blame, she acknowledged that she had spoiled Zoe. It's like she knew how bad her daughter was but just refused to accept it, even at the end. If I felt bad for anyone, it was Jessie and Mrs. Fischer. I also thought Gabriel was a saint!

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC of this book.

There was some very clever plotting in this book.
It starts with a tragedy and then follows family and friends of the victim as they come to grips with the aftermath.
I thought it was interesting to get the perspectives from the people who knew Zoe (the victim). The author did a great job in illustrating how the perceptions we have of a person can be completely different depending on our relationship to them.
For example, Zoe’s mom, Lydia, remembers her daughter as any mom would – with affection, but with regret for the times she was harsh with Zoe. This does not jibe with the image of Zoe as related by her best friend, Shayna.
She remembers Zoe as someone who had changed recently and not necessarily for the better. Through Shayna’s eyes, we see that Zoe herself was a chameleon, putting on a different persona depending on who she was dealing with at the time.
I also found Bernadette’s (the teacher) view of Zoe to be interesting. As a former teacher, I could relate to how she felt about Zoe. Teachers often see sides of kids that the parents never do. That being said, Bernadette wasn’t all on the level either.
And then there’s the older sister, Jessie. Lydia has a difficult time being around her for various reasons, but Jessie has her own set of demons to deal with, especially as Lydia rejects her.
Of course, there’s also the question of what really happened to Zoe the night she disappeared and ended up dead.
All of this works together to make a compelling read. There were times that I felt it skewed young because of how much it dealt with teenage relationships and feelings, but I guess that was to be expected when the central character is a teenager.
This unflinching look at the masks we wear even with people we know best should not be missed.