I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I found this a page turner and read it in one sitting during a coach journey. A group of university students fail to turn up for a dinner with their parents at Parents' Weekend. These include the son of the dean's admin, and the son of someone who works for the State Department and has a security detail. Sarah Keller, an FBI agent who is literally in her first day at a new office, is part of the team investigating their disappearance. There are chapters from the perspectives of each parent and each child, as well as from the perspectives of the happily married Keller, who also manages not to have a tragic backstory or to be a borderline alcoholic, which is always refreshing.

The resolution to the mystery is slightly convoluted and a little unlikely, but nevertheless I would wholeheartedly recommend this.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Parents Weekend releases May 6, 2024

3.5

It’s Parents Weekend at Santa Clara University, yet none of their kids showed up to the group dinner on Friday night.
With the campus on edge after the news of a student death that very same day, the parents of Blane, Stella, Libby, and Felix are left in a state of concernment, wondering why their kids all went off-the-grid at the same time.
Does this have anything to do with the fact that two of them are the kids of a high-profile judge and the assistant Secretary of State? Or is this just typical student behaviour surrounding parties and fraternity pledges?

<i>Parents Weekend</I> sees the return of FBI Special Agent, Sarah Keller. In Finlay’s <I>The Night Shift</I>, Sarah was eight months pregnant and living in NYC. Now, having just moved to California to her husband’s hometown with their nine-year-old twins, she has been assigned to the case of the missing university students.

Short chapters and multiple perspectives made for an engaging read. The lives of these parents were more drama-filled than their kids, and I was fully living for their mess the same way I would be tuning in to an episode of reality TV.
While I found the ending to be predictable, I appreciated that there was a decent amount of time to catch up with the characters instead of the story abruptly ending once the case was solved.

cw: mentions of kidnapping, suicide + attempted suicide, infidelity, child sex offender, panic attacks