A great YA read! I do not usually go for books that surround a podcast, but I gave it a chance, and I am glad that I did.

I’ll be honest, for about 30% of this book, I thought I was going to rate it 3 stars and shrug that it just was trying too hard to be A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. But I kept reading and found myself intrigued by the direction of the story and the characters. Cam and Blair couldn’t be more different, but they remained friends even as Blair watched Cam forge ahead with all of her impossibleness and lack of tact. Blair was a thinker, the self conscious one, the one who kept Cam grounded. I loved their friendship.
I liked Missing Clarissa way more than I originally expected to and I definitely recommend it to fans of Holly Jackson and Courtney Summers. It became its own story and I loved it.
My only criticism is that it hurt my soul to have the characters whip out a phone book from 2002 and call it so old, but I’ll get over it lol. I guess to teens in a YA book published in 2023, 2002 was a long time ago!
Overall, the story was compelling and I liked that both Cam and Blair learned a lot about themselves and their town and gained perspective on Clarissa’s story.

Give me a mystery that's a 20 year old cold case and two teens starting a podcast and doing some sleuthing a la Veronica Mars and I'm in!

Cam & Blair start a podcast about a 20 year old cold case of a missing cheerleader (Clarissa) from their small town and expect to just talk about theories to fulfill their journalism class project. Boy how that changed. The interviews with people who knew Clarissa open a new can of worms at every turn and you're sucked into the mystery too. Though some things they find out could put them in danger, they persist and also find out more about who they are and what they want. The fast paced flow of the book along with suspense of who killed Clarissa definitely makes this a page turner.

This was entertaining and great for a YA read, However it felt pretty young to me.
That isn’t bad - it is marketed towards a YA audience, but overall this one just wasn’t for me.

This one was just ok for me. It's one of several "two girls start a podcast to investigate a cold case" books being published this year and that is not in its favor unfortunately.

Missing Clarissa was definitely an intriguing read, as I read it in one sitting, but I found it to overall be lacking. As someone who reads a lot of true crime and listens to a lot of true crime podcasts, I was really drawn to this story, and I personally really enjoy books that use podcast transcripts as part of the storytelling.

This book started off strong, but for the majority of the book the pacing felt off. The last two chapters moved so incredibly quickly, but not only because of the high stakes. A lot of it felt all jumbled and like half finished sentences. Additionally, a lot of the ending felt rushed --- the last half of the book felt like a first draft to me.

The mystery of what happened to Clarissa, and who killed her, was (at least to me) completely clear by the third chapter, so I just spent the remaining time waiting for Cam and Blair to figure it out.

I think that Missing Clarissa had a lot of potential, but ultimately fell flat.

When two best friends start a true crime podcast for journalism class, they think the sensational case of a missing cheerleader twenty years ago is the perfect story to explore. But as the girls dig, they start uncovering secrets and motives for multiple people to want Clarissa dead, and as they get closer to the truth of what happened, they risk becoming Oreville’s next story of missing girls. Fans of Sadie and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder will love this new voice in YA thrillers.

This was a perfectly readable, if flawed, YA contemporary mystery. It read simultaneously a little young/simplistic for the older teen age of the characters, yet also occasionally dropped into infodumps of serious political issues (mainly by one character) that slowed down the generally quick narrative. There was an interesting twist, but the mystery generally had something of a procedural type feeling - a few suspects are presented, a few clues dropped, and everything is wrapped up. I also found it a little jarring how the narration would jump between characters' points of view within short periods of time (it's not dual POV so much as "whoever I want, whenever I want" POV) and wasn't really drawn in by either main character; Cam's flaws got to the point of irritation toward the end, and overall the book felt too short and fast-paced to really get to know or deeply sympathize with either of them.

Still, the true crime/mystery element is popular (Sadie, The Good Girls, All the Pretty Things, The Cheerleaders, Karen McManus's work), so this might appeal to those who want something akin to Good Girl's Guide, I Killed Zoe Spanos or the Stevie Bell series but with a quicker narrative.

What an interesting and fascinating story. I am just so unsure what to say as everything I want to talk about could be a spoiler. I’m just going to say this … jump into this story and hang on for dear life.

Thank you to NetGalley, Wednesday Books, and Ripley Jones for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I wanted to like this book. I loved the premise, but honestly, this was a DNF for me. It was hard to keep up with if it was Cam or Bailey talking. I also didn't like the mention of every single character's skin color. It wasn't just once or twice, it was every single character. That is not the first thing I want to know about a character.

I found both main characters annoying in their own ways. Cam basically uses Blaire. But Blaire allows it and is a follower. I tried but I just didn't like it.

Blair and Cam open a real can of worms when they decide to make a podcast about Clarissa who went missing twenty years ago. This might feel familiar (secrets, lies pod casting twists) but this time it's teens who are doing the investigation. Jones has done a good job with them as characters and keeps this moving smartly til an ethical issue (no spoilers) that will make the reader think, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's YA but cross over readers will find things here as well.

Hmmm, sadly, I didn't really like this one. It's advertised as being similar to books like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, but the plot feels a bit too similar while the main characters simultaneously lack the likeable charm and tenacity of that book's main character.

Ultimately, I just never became that invested in the mystery yet I was still able to somewhat predict what happened.

I think some people who really like the high schoolers with a podcast approach to murder mysteries might like this, but it just didn't quite click for me.

While a podcast solving a murder isn’t an original premise in books or TV, “Missing Clarissa” is still a great who-dun-it read. In the vein of a Caroline B. Cooney novel, the book follows a pair of teenagers on a quest for justice & a good grade, as they look to solve a decades-old disappearance. Great for adults & teens alike!

Thank you NetGalley, Wednesday Books, and Ripley Jones for the advanced copy of Missing Clarissa in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I am really digging this era we are in with podcast-centric thrillers, and the fact that this one was YA made it even more entertaining for me. It's a super quick read with a plot that moves along very quickly.

When it came to the big reveal, I found myself asking "how did I not see that coming!?" which is definitely a marker of success for a thriller in my book.

I will undoubtedly be reading more by Jones in the future. Missing Clarissa is out March 7!

There were elements I appreciated about this one! Particularly, some of the discussion about true crime (Sophie was a breath of fresh air) and the way the characters were messy and imperfect, which felt true to life for teens. I did find the characters a bit flat at times, there were quite a few convenient spill-all conversations, and for all that the podcast and mystery were about Clarissa, I felt like I still didn't really know her.

In 1999, popular cheerleader Clarissa went missing during a party. Now, more than twenty years later, two high school students start a podcast to try to solve the case.

This is an entertaining read that will fly by. I loved the characters and thought they portrayed today’s youth well. I’m not a huge fan of the murder mystery podcast trope that is so popular these days, but this one was interesting and I got involved in the mystery.

“We didn’t think about much of anything that summer, except how to find the next party. Until the night Clarissa vanished from the forest. After that, all we thought about was Clarissa. The whole country thought about Clarissa.”

Missing Clarissa comes out 3/7.

When Clarissa Campbell disappeared from a party in the woods without a trace in 1999 her story made national news. Everyone wondered what happened to the beautiful girl who had her whole life ahead of her. Suspicion fell on her boyfriend, but no one was ever charged. Whatever happened to Clarissa Campbell?

Twenty years later, Blair and Cameron decide to make a podcast about Clarissa's disappearance for their high school journalism class. To them she's just a dead, very pretty white girl from a long time ago, and Cam is sure they'll find her hanging out somewhere no one ever thought to look. However, as they talk to people who personally knew Clarissa, they come to realize her life mattered to others. Heavily invested in their project, the girls soon find not everyone wants to know what happened that night in the woods back in 1999. As they get closer to solving the mystery, someone wants to make sure they forget about Clarissa. Will they get the chance to find out the truth before their investigation is cut short?

This book will keep readers turning pages, eager to find out what happened to Clarissa. I'll admit I was surprised.

I didn’t realize this was a YA novel. The story was well written, captivating and all around a good read. the two main characters were full of spunk and tenacity and I was hooked on their podcast just like everyone else. A sure fire best seller.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

Ripely Jones’s writing style had me guessing the whole time and really got me into the heads of Blair and Cam. The episodic chapters really painted a clear picture of the full investigation.

Really enjoyed this thrilling debut novel! Intense from the beginning, I definitely didn't know who did it until Cam did! I liked the evolution of the main characters relationship and their relationships with others.