I'm not sure how I missed Gillian McAllister on my radar, but once I discovered her I read three of her books in a week. Now she is now at the top of my must read author list and her latest book did not disappoint. A cop's missing person's case takes a turn when she is blackmailed to frame a suspect she knows is innocent. What follows is a mystery with multiple twists that took me by surprise! Very clever plot & perfect pacing makes it a page turner!

Holy freaking MOLY. This book was wild. The twists were insane & I absolutely in no way saw them coming. Like at all. Gillian McAllister’s writing is phenomenal & they way she ties things together without giving anything away in the process is just amazing.

I will say that even though you’re bouncing back & forth between multiple POVs & there’s so much going on— it was a bit of a slow burn for me. I noticed at around 30-40% that I started to skim a tad but it was short lived. I only wanted to mention it in case it hits you the same way. Keep on reading because it’s so freaking good & your mind will be blown!

I was 50% done last night & I didn’t stop until I finished it.

Thank you so much Gillian McAllister, NetGalley, & William Morrow Books for this Arc in exchange for an honest review!

I'm torn, on this novel. I adore everything Gillian McAlister but this feels like one of her lesser works. It is genius, for how could it not be? Yet, the ending felt rushed and not quite satisfying.

A great read from start to finish! At first, it was a tad awkward switching from first person narrative to third person from chapter to chapter, but I’m assuming if I’d read Gillian McAllister before, I would’ve known more what to expect in writing style, and it doesn’t take away from how great the story was. I actually really grew to love her writing style the further I got into the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire premise of the book. I’m someone who tries to solve cases before the end of the book and I could not break the case! Loved it, DCI Day would make a great leading character in a series.
Lastly, I want to thank NetGalley, William Morrow of HarperCollins, and Gillian McAllister for allowing me the opportunity to read & review this novel before it gets released to the general public.

I received a free copy of, Just Another Missing Person, by Gillian McAllister, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Olivia is missing. So many people in this world go missing, vanished without a trace, some never found. I found this to be a bit sad actually and tragic, so many people missing and never found, some never talked about again.

This book kept me fully engaged with twist after twist. The story is written in several different perspectives and each chapter is titled for the person whose eyes you are reading through. A pleasure to read and highly recommended for any suspense lover!

Unfortunately I didn't finish this one! I just couldn't get into it... felt like it was dragging and repeating a lot of the same stuff. I needed more answers in the beginning to hook me.

⭐4/5

➡Less than 12 hours ago, 22 year old Olivia was reported missing by her new housemates after they received a concerning and ambiguous text. Julia, the detective heading up the search for Olivia, thinks she knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter. But she has no idea just how close to home this case is going to get. Because behind Olivia's disappearance is a string of lies and secrets, beginning with a secret Julia's worked to keep away from the world.

Filled with twists, turns and the moral dilemmas of three separate parents, Just Another Missing Person is riveting to its core and begs the question: just how far would you go for your child?

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🙏 Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow @ HarperCollins for the advanced reader copy of Just Another Missing Person. All opinions are my own.
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🎯 What I loved: I loved that there was similar play on the unparalleled lengths a parent will go to to protect their children and on time-bending from McAllister's previous book (Wrong Place, Wrong Time) but that this felt distinctly different in subject and nature. This wasn't just a domestic thriller, it was a book about how far parents will go to protect their children. I found it so interesting that McAllister was pregnant while writing this- her take on parenthood and relationships is so keen and observant.

🙅‍♀️ What I didn't: As is pretty typical with thrillers, the second half of the book moved much faster for me than the first half. Once I hit the big plot twist, things sped up quite a bit but it really took me a while to get invested in the characters. Looking back though, I love the development and can say it was totally worth it to stick with it.
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Read if you love:
* morally gray characters
* missing person cases
* complex parent/child relationships
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See also: The Night She Disappeared, Zero Days, Gone Tonight

*Note to publisher: My review will go live on pub day: August 1, 2023! It will be posted on my instagram @manuscripts_and_margaritas

Just Another Missing Person: fast-paced. Very suspenseful. Great ending! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read this advanced copy.

I read this ARC for honest feedback.

This thriller was very well written. DCI Day has a missing person case that is making her choose between keeping her family safe, and falling into corruption, or doing what needs to be done the right way. Her mental torment of trying to stay true to herself makes this book a read you can't put down.

Written from multiple persectives, Just another missing person is an easy yet complex read.

There are so many head games and so much decept taking place that the storyline borders on ridiculous.

However, the overwhelming message is not lost : a loving parent will do anything for their child.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the chance to read this ARC.

Very twisty! I don't want to say more as not to spoil it, but I loved this book. It was like a police procedural married a psychological thriller. I also liked the writing style - very easy to identify with what the characters were feeling.

I received this book from Netgalley for a full and honest review. This was a great twist and turn book and felt different than the other Gillian book I had read. This follows multiple POVs after a young girl goes missing in an alleyway. We mainly follow Julia the detective that gets pulled into the case and how a decision in her past comes back to haunt her. She works to solve the case as well as wondering if it has anything to do with a previous missing girl from a year ago. I thought the twists in the book kept it interesting and fun. The other POVs also added to the story and once I hit the last half I couldn’t put it down. The first half is a little slower but overall I loved the way this story was told. I really loved this authors book Wrong Place Wrong Time and this book cemented the author as one to watch out for.

4.5 stars

Julia is a local detective who has been assigned to case of a missing young woman. Due to some secrets of her own, Julia finds herself crossing professional lines. Told through multiple POVs, this story unfolds in an unexpected way.

Gillian McAllister is one of those authors who really sees the long game. Although this story takes a little to settle into, the necessary foundation and setup pays off in the end. She is meticulous with her details and leaves bread crumbs along the way that you may only notice in hindsight. It was fun to make guesses and predictions along the way, though Gillian definitely got me a few times!

I found Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister to be a propulsive and thrilling read. In this novel , Julia is a detective assigned to a missing persons case. While investigating the case, Julia is blackmailed and a secret from her past is threatened to be revealed. How far will she go to protect herself and her child? I really enjoyed the structure of the novel where each chapter is told from one of three perspectives, all parents whose children are tied together in this missing persons case. This novel ponders the age old question, how far would you go to protect your child? All parents trying to do the right thing for their children even if it was morally or ethically flawed. Definitely full of twists I didn’t see coming but that seem plausible and not out of left field. I quite enjoyed it and it had me turning pages to figure out what would happen next. Apparently I like my thrillers served with a side of moral dilemna.

I had the pleasure of being introduced to McAllister’s writing last year when the bookclub I read with picked Wrong Place Wrong Time one month. And I loved that book! Such a unique mystery and I love me a time loop story. I knew then that this would be an author I follow.

Just Another Missing Person was a fantastic read and asks the question of how far would you morally stray from your values to protect someone you love. I put my detective hat on and committed to absorbing every clue to solve this mystery (mostly because I’m annoying and thrive on solving a whodunit before the big reveal). I even took notes, lol! Well it was all pointless as heck because McAllister took a lot of twist and turns and totally surprised me. In a very good way. And they weren’t stupid, over the top plot twists either. It took me a while to get completely onboard, due to some extensive plot/character setup, and I definitely spent the first couple chapters incredibly confused, but once I hit the halfway point I literally couldn’t put it down.

I will admit that there was something disconnecting me from the plot at first, I felt like the writing was overly descriptive. I couldn’t remember if I felt that way before with McAllister but I think that’s just her writing style. However, the devil is in the details and it did pay off.

If you’re a patient reader who loves a layered mystery with multiple POVs and some good ol plot twists, you’ll enjoy this one! I think that this would be a much better read than listen due to the construction of the narrative, might be hard to follow via audiobook.

I don’t know if I am off or not in the mood for this genre, but I really struggled with this book - which was such a bummer because I’ve only heard great things about this author! Here’s what I loved: the twists. Definitely didn’t predict half of them, so I thought those were great. Here’s what fell flat: the POVs and the writing style? Some of the cliffhangers were great, but there would be such a long gap until it came back to that person’s POV, I would have to jog my memory. There were points where I felt confused and had to go back a little or wait for clarity upcoming.

Just One Missing Person is my second Gillian McCallister book, and there's something special about her stories. What I liked the most was her focus on parent-child relationships. In this novel, a parent will do anything (even super crazy things) for their child.
Julia, a cop and mother, is on another missing person's case. But as she starts the investigation, she is blackmailed into planting evidence at the scene. But not blackmailed with money or death, but with a secret she has kept the last year.
This book was a wild ride. It was intense, and the twists were epic! Like throw-your-book-against-the-wall, I can't believe that just happened. I loved seeing this story unfold.
My main criticism is that I got confused a bit in the beginning. Some writing just felt awkward. I found myself having to reread sections a bit. And I felt like some decisions that parents made were a bit too off-the-wall, but maybe that was the writer's point. People do crazy things to protect those that they love.
I also loved the multiple points of view in this story. We get 3, all parents to 3 key figures in the story. As a mother myself, I love seeing stories with parent/child relationships at its heart. We don't get this very often in thrillers.

Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister is about Olivia, a 22-year-old without a history of running away who disappears entering a dead end alley, never to be seen coming out. DCI Julia is tasked with recovering Olivia, but early on in the investigation is blackmailed into making sure that someone is framed for Olivia's disappearance. Nothing more should really be said about this book in terms of the synopsis, knowing less is more!

Gillian really shows how to write an understated suspense novel with this one and the twist makes the reader want to go back and look at the clues they missed along the way. I am so glad I had the ebook copy of this rather than an audiobook so I could do just that! Under the surface, the story of this one is quite simple but intricately plotted so everything lines up beautifully yet without being super obvious.

The characters are well-written and you really feel for each character that is undergoing their own personal struggle, from a dad of a was never found, to a teenage girl in the wrong place at the wrong time and is haunted by her own actions, each character has a reason for keeping secrets and reacting in their own way to the tragedies in this novel. The ending was also uplifting and satisfying in a way only Gillian seems able to do in a thriller.

I don't want to say too much more as it might accidentally give away plot details but I have been talking this one up to my fellow thriller readers. I can't wait to read her next novel!

Thank you William Morrow for my Netgalley copy of JUST ANOTHER MISSING PERSON by Gillian McAllister, out 8/1/2023.

The twists in this book are insane! This book follows a detective named Julia who comes across a missing person case and she soon realizes this case could bring up her deepest, darkest secret. I was a little bored in the beginning, but then I quickly got sucked into Julia’s impossible moral choice she has to make. The first twist had me guffawed! Then, I kept reading and THAT LAST CHAPTER. WOW. It had me hollering, ngl.

I liked this book MUCH more than her other novel, WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME, and I’ll definitely pick up something next from her. Sometimes I get confused with references and slang from the United Kingdom, but I just keep trucking along. I’m going to seek out McAllister’s backlist next as I love how she writes about parenthood and fleshes out such deep characters, especially for the thriller genre. This book followed three parents forced to make different choices to protect the ones they love and it was done exceptionally well.

Gillian McAllister is not afraid to write morally grey and flawed characters full of so much love. Definitely check out her writing if you’re looking for a twisty thriller with a dose of lengths a person will go to to protect their child. The acknowledgements at the end were beautifully written as well as McAllister is about to become a first-time mother. I never would have guessed based on how well she writes motherhood.