The writing was really good and the setting and tone of this book was tense and eerie. The characters were really fleshed out and had great perspectives. It was really immersive and tackles many issues in our society regarding the treatment of women.

Okay, so I realised why this book didn’t work for me; even though it’s really good. I read the synopsis but I kept thinking the two girls (Chloe and Natalia) would team up and solve all the mysteries. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading more mysteries? See, the synopsis says Chloe and Natalia form an uneasy alliance and then you pair it with a mystery.

So, I was annoyed for a bit because I viewed it differently. It affected how I read the rest of the novel; but also I rated it 3 stars because of the writing style and the characters. The writing didn’t flow easily in my opinion. I would read and the way the paragraphs flowed from one to another – it wasn’t natural. Most of the time it felt stilted – like Hall didn’t work enough on ensuring paragraphs were linked to each other.

It’s a dual-pov but I much preferred Chloe’s chapters to Natalia. I couldn’t get a feel for her (Natalia’s) personality. She first came off as a mean girl and then she was distant. But then she really cared, then she didn’t seem like she cared. It was too confusing for me. Chloe I understood and also cared about more.

I felt for them, for the characters involved, for the story and the fact that this type of subject unfortunately happens all over, all the time.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of THE GAPS. Review has been posed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

This is an intense and dark YA thriller that will have you hooked from the first page! It centres around the abduction of a biracial student at a ladies' college. But the two main characters are Chloe and Natalia, who form an unlikely alliance and friendship to cope with the fear and grief gripping their school and fellow students.

The characters were layered, the writing was atmospheric and descriptive, and the storyline was thought-provoking. Highly recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Captivating and thrilling young adult read. It's almost impossible to read the first page and successfully rip yourself away from the book!

This book tore my heart out and trampled it. I love dark YA books that examine communities after tragedies, and this one didn't disappoint.

this could be good but it is getting released when YA is saturated with the same plot and other authors have done it so well that it is hard to give a nonbiased review

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

Thank you for the ARC of the book. It was a beautiful read with soulful, layered characters who are very relatable. This is a dark ya book that is quite unlike any others. I would recommend it to my friends. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the book.

this is book was realistic, thought-provoking, and soul-shattering in the best way possible. this is a book that I will recommend for a dark ya book that everyone should read. i loved all the characters they were well. thought out and the plot was well written.

I truly enjoyed this book. The cover sets a misleading precedent for what lies inside the pages. Told from to POVs, this story is one about grief, guilt, and friendship. It makes you think, feel, and believe in the characters.

What an amazing book! It started out as a "typical" murder mystery - the teenage girl goes missing, the community can't believe this could be happening at their posh private school. I loved that the novel quickly turned into an examination of the disposability of girls and women, and how a community - adults and teens alike - dealt with this tragedy as it unfolded. Our narrators, two teenage girls going through this experience in different ways and for different reasons, converge on each other like a battle, and it was amazing to witness this community event through their two very different lives. I plan to purchase a copy to put on my middle school classroom shelves immediately!

This was ok but definitely not what I expected. There definitely is a girl who goes missing but while it is mentioned often and is the catalyst for a lot of actions, it's not really the focus and this is not a thriller or mystery as I was expecting. This book really is more about how two of the girls at the school are dealing with their classmate's disappearance.

Chloe was an interesting character and I liked her chapters the best. However, so much of her storyline was focused on her art/photography which is not my thing. This may work really well for some people but I just don't like modern art and so most of that plot was confusing or just not interesting. I was much more interested in her realizations about race and gender and finding her place in this school that she really didn't fit into. I would have enjoyed it more without the art piece.

Natalia was a hot mess. Now, she deserves her feelings given the situation and I get that she may react strangely to Yin's disappearance but reading about it was a chaotic mess. I still don't totally understand her motivations for a lot of things. I just didn't like her or really understand her character, she seemed to change her personality continuously.

There was definitely some good stuff in here but it just wasn't written in a way that I liked. The art discussions went over my head and there was a lot of angsty fluff between the good stuff. If you were into modern art, this might be one to pick up but without understanding that piece of it, it was a middle of the road read for me.

*I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to net galley and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book! I thought this book was okay but not for any reason I just thought it was fine

author: leanne hall
release date: feb 8, 2022
general premise: when news of yin mitchell, a student being abducted from balmoral ladies college is announced, it affects all of the students, including chloe, a quiet biracial transfer student, and natalia, one of the popular white girls in their grade. as time drags on without news of yin coming back, things grow more and more tense between the students, and both chloe and natalia have to learn how to cope with their grief.
first read: beginning of october
content warnings: mentions of sexual assault, offscreen kidnapping, character death, racism, sexism
notes:
going to start on a light-hearted note because the rest of this will probably not be, but i didn’t know this book was set in australia or that the author was australian, so some of the dialogue and colloquialisms threw me for a bit before i figured it out. i also don’t think i’ve read any books by australian authors, either.
worth noting because it took me way longer than it should have to figure this out but balmoral is a secondary school, not a university
this book is a dual pov, which i think was a really smart choice in this case because leanne hall uses these characters and their perspectives to talk about very important issues that impact them but not necessarily the other pov character.
chloe’s pov is used to explore how women, specifically women of color, are erased from mainstream art. she attempts to tackle or challenge this with her own art project and in doing so discovers how few asian women and women of color in general whose work has been well-documented. there’s a point in the book where she’s at an art show with natalia, and the only exhibit that she truly enjoys is a photo series done by a south sudanese woman. it pushes her in her own project, and it opens up a rabbit hole for her in terms of what her art says about her, and who she is. by the end of the book, she’s more confident in her art and is working on a potential project for a proper gallery showing about how some of the girls in her class see themselves and who they want to be.
her other main struggle throughout the book is fitting in at her school. she moved schools the year before while the rest of the students have all been at balmoral together for years, which leaves her stuck between two worlds: that of her old high school and her new one. as somebody who’s experienced this feeling of being stuck in that situation and unable to do much about it, i thought that it was a really authentic portrayal. in particular, the way chloe talks about her school friends and how they only talk to each other due to proximity really stuck out to me. that sentiment felt like it was taken from my own brain.
these two points combine to give her a really pleasing and satisfying arc, and by the end of the book despite all the tragedy, chloe is reaching happiness, and honestly i was happy for her.
natalia is completely different. where chloe is quiet and sticks to the sidelines, natalia is bold and the center of everything at balmoral. her story is more focussed on yin’s disappearance, because it’s revealed that she and yin were really close until a certain point in what i think is the austalian equivalent of middle school. she and chloe’s paths don’t really intersect until natalia worms her way into modeling for her art project. when the project is done, it becomes a lot bigger for natalia, especially after it’s taken down due to a fellow student’s complaints. you really get to explore her anger about what happened to yin and chloe’s piece being taken down, because she’s grieving for somebody she used to know, which is almost worse. thinking about old friends with whom things ended poorly is always difficult. this is another piece of this book that i can relate to, although fortunately nothing like what happened to yin has happened in my life. natalia’s story arc is also satisfying, because by the end she’s able to process what happened, and while she doesn’t necessarily make her peace with it, she’s not as intensely angry at the world around her.
when the news breaks that yin’s body has been found, it’s genuinely heartbreaking. it’s in natalia’s pov, and the way it’s written is absolutely crushing. there are other scenes where natalia is with yin’s mother and younger brothers that are also so crushing, because they do an excellent job of describing absolutely world-stopping grief. even though yin and natalia weren’t close when yin passed away, it’s still that type of grief for natalia, and it’s beautifully and painfully written. there were several points in the story that made me stop and cry.
both povs have moments of reflection on the situation surrounding them and yin and how this kind of stuff just happens to women, specifically women of color, and the world seems to move like it always does. it’s worth noting that balmoral has a history of strange kidnappings like this, but the victims were returned. this isn’t seen as particularly important past the beginning of the book, proving the points that the characters think later on.
this could have easily been a more stereotypical mystery novel, but rather than the characters trying to figure out what happened, they recognize that there’s very little they can do and instead attempt to vent their frustrations and grief in different ways. ultimately, for me, it’s more satisfying considering the end result and how close each of them are to the crime itself.
i wasn’t sure how much i would like this book going in, but i really enjoyed it and it was very emotional and a little bit cathartic to read. i can’t wait to get a copy when it comes out in february.

this is what i used as the script for my youtube review and it's not really a formal written review!

What does it mean to be the one left behind?

When sixteen-year-old Yin Mitchell is abducted, the news reverberates through the whole Year Ten class at Balmoral Ladies College. As the hours tick by, the girls know the chance of Yin being found alive is becoming smaller and smaller.

Police suspect the abduction is the work of a serial offender, with none in the community safe from suspicion. Everyone is affected by Yin’s disappearance—even scholarship student Chloe, who usually stays out of Balmoral drama, is drawn into the maelstrom. And when she begins to form an uneasy alliance with the queen of Year Ten, Natalia, things get even more complicated.

Looking over their shoulders at every turn, Chloe and Natalia must come together to cope with their fear and grief as best they can. A tribute to friendship in all its guises, The Gaps is a moving examination of vulnerability and strength, safety and danger, and the particular uncertainty of being a young woman in the world.

Every time i tried to get into this book, it just repelled me .I tried so hard o be invested, but i still read a couple of pages without absorbing a single word. I know this is my own problem, and that it doesn't reflect the quality of the book, I'm just not in the right mental state to read this book. I don't want for this review to come as an attack. If i were to write a review it wouldn't be honest.
We all have those days, and i wouldn't like to leave the author with a review for a book I couldn't read.
But i'm sure i'll give it a second chance, the cover is beautiful, and i was intrigued by the story from the beginning, it was bad timing, that's all.

YA isn’t a genre I pick up but after hearing good things from my friends in Aus I really wanted to read this so thank you very much text publishing for giving me access to this title .
The plot focuses around a missing teenager from an all girls school and is narrated by two of her classmates who are very different characters . The book isn’t a thriller or a crime novel but more an exploration of grief and friendship with enough suspense about the disappearance to keep you engaged . It covers relevant issues such as race , class and the objectification of r women and for the YA market it is perfect material to provoke discussions , if only YA fiction was this good when I was that age!

I chose the ARC mostly for the cover. If loving covers is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I went on a bit of a rollercoaster ride with this story. I didn’t love it at first. It was slow, lacking a likable or even unlikable character, and I just wasn’t impressed. But I persisted and it paid off. I wound up thoroughly enjoying this book. It’s reserved and not action packed at all. But it’s a beautiful story of 2 girls finding themselves when a classmate goes missing. It’s heartbreaking, frustrating, and moving.