This was not my first Claire Douglas read and definitely won't be my last. Great creepy atmosphere and characters. Suspenseful and compelling

Claire Douglas is truly a queen of surprising twists! She builds tension from the very first page and doesn’t ever let up, sprinkling in small details to keep you guessing what is actually going on near the Devil’s Corridor. To add even more suspense, a second story line is sporadically dispersed, making you wonder what, if anything, it has to do with the three missing girls. Once the two stories intertwine, everything you thought you knew…you didn’t.


I love this book and admire how quickly I was able to attach myself to some of the characters. Olivia and three of her friends were involved in a car wreck but only Olivia was found. She was badly wounded and went through grueling surgeries and therapy to save her crushed leg. Despite her physical limitations, Olivia is a strong character and independent in many aspects of her day-to-day life. She has her boyfriend, Wesley, and her mother to help her when necessary and they all seem to have a loving relationship. Recording a podcast about the disappearances, Jenna arrives in the small town the week of the twentieth anniversary of the accident. She knows her presence won’t be well-received but continues her quest for information regardless. Jenna is strong-willed but also empathetic and kind. These aren’t qualities you’ll usually find together, especially for a reporter! She is very easy to like from the beginning and I found myself rooting for her quite often.


I don’t want you to think everything is a bed of roses just because Olivia and Jenna happen to be wonderful examples of strong female leads. There are some shady, two-faced characters and believe me when I say…everybody lies. Watch out for the flock of red herrings but even with your sleuth goggles on, I think you’ll be hard-pressed to figure this one out! You will love this book if you are a fan of multiple points of view and timelines, police procedurals, twisty whodunnits, and jaw-dropping endings!

Thank you to the publisher for granted me this early copy of the e-book. This was my first time reading from Claire Douglas, and I think that I just expected a little more given how much people had hyped her up. The girls who disappeared follows a journalist when her life has received a death threat and she needs to investigate the truth about a car crash that happened from many years earlier. The car accident is only one of the pieces. There are also three missing girls and a mystery that’s decades old. Our protagonist protagonist is on the verge of figuring out what happened to these girls and that’s when things go wrong. I thought this was fine for a book. It kept me entertained, but I don’t know that I would be eager to read the next book from the author.

Read or listen if you like:
💀 Thrillers
✌🏻 Dual POV
⏳ Mysteries spanning 2 Decades
👶 Hearing things

This one was such a wonderful concept and I wish I loved it more than I did. The atmospheric vibes created with the storytelling and the little bits added here and there to immerse the reader were by far my favorite parts of this book.

Thank you to the publisher for my ARC copy in exchange for my review.

Douglas writes solid who-done-its with strong characters and lots of secrets. If you need a quick page turner this is the perfect choice.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins for the opportunity to read "the Girls Who Disappeared” in exchange for my honest review.
I highly rate this psychological suspense mystery by Claire Douglas. This book grabbed me from the beginning and has me peeled to the pages until the very end. Journalist Jenna Halliday travels to a rural Wilshire town to investigate the cold case of a mysterious car crash that resulted in the disappearance of three girls and one survivor, Olivia Rutherford. Twenty year later Olivia is still traumatized and has very little recollection of the accident. Multiple characters in the story are suspected with a surprise ending. This was a fun read.

You can always expect a layered mystery with great character development from Claire Douglas. I enjoyed her previous novel, The Couple at No. 9, last year so I jumped at the chance to read her latest release. Overall, it was a decent story with a well-developed plot and a solid mystery, but the ending was underwhelming. It left me disappointed that it didn’t turn out to be more of a thriller like I had hoped. Still a good read, but definitely left me wanting a bit more excitement.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Perennial for the digital and physical ARCs in exchange for my honest review.

I almost missed my Friday Spotlight 😵‍💫

This Friday goes out to the beautiful Claire Douglas.

Last year a copy of A Couple at No. 9, ended up in my greedy little paws and I devoured every last bit of that terrifying ride . Douglas not only knows how to spin a murderous tale of deceit but she also include quite a bit of psychological twists.

Now, I know all of you are incredibly anxious to get your hands on The Girls Who Disappeared and all I can do is promise you, it is about to blow your mind and exceed expectations .

Through years of spending hours upon hours with my nose buried in books I have been pickier with my ratings . The Couple at No 9 and The Girls Who Disappeared are both 5 star reads .

I’ve become a huge fan of Claire Douglas and after reading these two back to back hits, I instantly ran to buy Barnes and Noble to purchase her entire back log .

I suggest you do the same ♥️

Teaser:

A journalist’s life is threatened when she investigates the truth about a mysterious car crash that happened twenty years earlier.

A car accident.
Three missing girls.
A twenty-year mystery.

A woman on the verge of discovering the truth . . .
In a rural Wilshire town lies the Devil’s Corridor—a haunted road which has witnessed eerie happenings, from unexplained deaths to the sounds of a child crying in the night.

In this bucolic stretch of Southwest England famous for its otherworldly sites, nothing is more puzzling than the Olivia Rutherford case. Four girls were driving home. After their car crashed only one—Olivia—was found.

What happened to the girls who disappeared? On the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy, journalist Jenna Halliday has arrived in Wiltshire to cover the case. The locals aren’t happy with this outsider determined to dig into the past. Least of all Olivia.
Soon, Jenna starts receiving menacing notes. The locals have made it clear she’s not welcome. But someone is going to make her leave one way or another. Jenna’s been warned: she must get out of this town before she suffers a dark fate . . . and becomes another mystery attached to this place.

Dual timelines... journalist trope... mysterious accident 20 years ago?! The Girls Who Disappeared is a classic, twisty thriller - perfect for a snowy day in or a pool day read!

Thanks so much netgalley for the chance to read this book!! This book makes you believe one thing then at the end you are so mistaken as to what really happened. I was not expecting the ending at all! I enjoyed this book a lot!

𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 4⭐️
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: thriller/mystery📚

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:
Hooked me on right away but some of the twists were a little much.

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
Multiple POVs
Small town mysteries
Dual timeline
Slow burn
Creepy woods
Lots of secrets
Eerie settings

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚍:
Intriguing plots
Fast paced
Nicely wrapped up ending
Shocking twists

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛:
I was disappointed by the ending
It was repetitive at times
Over the top plot

This book pulls you in from the very first page, it is both thrilling and suspenseful. There were so many clues and secrets I couldn't figure out who was lying, and this kept me turning those pages well into the night. The introduction of Stace had me confused but it all came together nicely. Thank you Netgalley and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you for the ARC! this was a compulsively good thriller. I loved the characters and how fast paced this was with quick chapters and multiple POVs as well as a storyline from the past. I liked how it all came together in the end and for sure will recommend this to all my other thriller lovers!

The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas was the fourth book I have read by the author. I have come to appreciate that I am guaranteed to get a solid thriller when I pick up one of hers. The Girls Who Disappeared was a solid 3 star rating from me. The pros were that it definitely held my interest and was unique. The cons were too many characters and a lot of them taking actions that were not reasonable in my opinion.

The Girls Who Disappeared centers on a mystery that took place twenty years before and the journalist who is set to do a podcast on the story. Twenty years ago there was a wreck that crippled Olivia, and from which both her friends who were in the vehicle with her disappeared while she was unconscious. Olivia has lived under a cloud of suspicion for all the time since as many believe she knows more about her friends' disappearance than she claims.

Jenna is the journalist who comes to the small town where the mystery happened set to interview anyone to see if she can make headway where the police didn't. It just so happens that there is a cold case cop who has also JUST been assigned the case to re-open and he just happens to have been dating one of the two girls who had disappeared.

In the book, all the characters are written as a bit shady and lots of red herrings are thrown in. While the ending made sense, it was unbelievable to me that no one could have solved it sooner. Also, all the coincidences throughout the novel that just happened to occur right when the journalist prepares to write the story just took me out of it a bit. However, it is a fun book and I think most people will overlook the coincidences more easily than I did.

This mystery/thriller intrigued me from the very beginning with the backstory of Olivia and her three friends that suddenly vanish after a car crash 20 years ago. Reading the beginning of this book felt like listening to a great true crime podcast! This story seemed to more so on the mystery side of things with some thrill elements sprinkled throughout which helped the pacing and kept my attention. The author did a good job of casting doubt and suspicion on several characters which will keep the reader guessing and crafting their own theories, and after guessing for so long, the final review was great! I couldn't tear my eyes away from the book for the last 20 pages!
The author is English, so there was some slang and words used in ways that I'm not familiar with, so that took me out of the story ever so slightly. Additionally, the story did switch between three story lines, and I found Jenna's story line easier to read and much more exciting than Olivia's. In Olivia's chapters, I was always waiting just to get back to Jenna.
This is a great fiction title for those who enjoy true crime!

The Girls Who Disappeared held a lot of promise for me. The description was compelling. I wanted to be welcomed into this experience and despite my many attempts I could not stay engaged with this story. The pace is painfully slow. So much so that I almost quit full stop.

I believe in the author’s abilities but this one missed the mark. I needed it to be tighter, faster, and feel the hook is missing.

I have loved all of this author’s books, but this one is my least favorite. It was still enjoyable, but the ending just got a bit far-fetched for me. It’s about a group of teenage girls that get into a car accident, only one lives, but the rest of them disappear. Many years later, a reporter comes to town to find out what happened to the girls that went missing. Someone wants to keep it buried.

Claire Douglas, why am I just discovering you now?!?! A huge thank you to Harper Perennial for granting me access to this title via NetGalley. I will be reading many more novels by Claire Douglas.

It's almost the anniversary of "The Accident". Twenty years ago, Olivia was driving her friends home from a night out in the nearby town when a man stepped out into the road causing her car to crash. However, when Olivia came to her three friends had disappeared as if they had never been there. Now, Jenna's on a work trip to try and shed new light on the their disappearance in a town where mystery lurks.

Not only did I enjoy the plot line, but I enjoyed Douglas' writing style. The dual perspectives was enjoyable and I loved getting glimpses of the puzzle from both Jenna and Olivia. I instantly found characters I didn't like, but Olivia and Jenna remained likable to me. This book makes nod to elements of mysticism and alien sightings which may not be for some, but you know how myths became powerful as the story passes from one person to another.

This one captivated me from the very beginning but as it went on it was kind of a let down. Don’t get me wrong it was a good read but nothing I’d save to re read. I did definitely need to finish it to see where this mystery went. This is an author I love and enjoy her reads but this one just wasn’t the best to me.

This. Book. WOW! I loved her story The Couple at Number 9, so I was thrilled to be selected to read The Girls Who Disappeared.

The story starts with a bang as Olivia and 3 friends are driving and get into a terrible accident. When Olivia comes to, her friends are gone and never to be seen again. 20 years pass and we meet Jenna, a journalist who is doing a podcast on the disappearance of the girls for the upcoming anniversary. She’s hoping to jog the memory of someone, or stir up old clues to bring new evidence to light. She’s met with resistance from everyone in town, especially Olivia, and everyone seems to be keeping secrets. Her life is in danger as she receives threats throughout her stay. There’s another side story that had me wondering how everything would tie in together.

Douglas is a master at weaving her stories into webs of lies and deceit, that you never fully untangle until the last page, and this book was no exception! I loved the spooky atmosphere she created with The Devils Corridor, and the forest surrounding Jenna’s isolated cabin. Several parts of the story had me extremely creeped out, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how the story ended up.

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Perennial and paperbacks for my ARC in exchange for my honest feedback! This book is out now, and is a must read!