This one was a slow starter for me. However once it got going it kicked into high gear. It was definitely an enjoyable thriller. I would recommend.

Very well written fast paced mystery dated 15 years after a young girl claims to have found a skeleton in the march land near her home on the Isle pf Man. Once I started reading it I couldn''t put it down and finished it in less than 2 days. Well worth the read.

I would like to thank the author, the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. It started out quite slowly but it gradually built up to the ending which I was not expecting. I didn’t like some of the characters but that didn’t stop me finishing the book.

I don't think I fully got into this story - it was so slow moving. By the time I got to the action, the book was nearly finished.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC.

This one started a little slow but picked up in the end. I loved the ending, especially the way it was spun out to be someone you wouldn't have expected it to be. I liked the way this author went about telling the story of Simone. Leaving things out until the end made for a good mystery.
I was kind of annoyed at Dallin, especially when he started questioning Cora and Rosalie's discoveries. Also not sure why Beth was such a huge part of the story other than the fact that her wife was stricken by anxiety (which didn't seem to hinder her helping a stranger at all).

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is not my usual genre, I’m more into romance stories and girlie books therefore am extremely pleased and grateful to them for opening up my mind to something totally different.

I enjoyed this very much. 4 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟

The book was terribly slow throughout. Many times I struggled and wanted to give up. But I stuck with it and there was an exciting twist at the end. But sadly not enough to get more stars.

I felt this was a good book . I enjoyed the plot and characters and the marsh setting. Good mystery read

This story didn’t grab me. It was very descriptive about the marshes etc. I never connected with any of the characters and I found myself skimming a lot. I was interested enough to see how it ended, but it wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down. Thank you to net galley for an advanced readers copy.

Interesting suspense story.
A young child finds a body in the Boggs, and no one believes her.
Fast forward 15 years and someone's asking questions.
3.85

Overall, this is a good novel. The premise intrigued me, as I’m sure it does many readers. While I think certain aspects of the premise’s execution fully developed, it still had merit.

Suspense
The book opens with young Rosalie becoming lost in the curraghs (boggy wetlands). She falls behind her brother Dallin and his friend Beth, and finds herself alone. Then she finds the skeleton.

The opening is beautifully written: the descriptions of the curraghs are appropriately eerie; there’s good tension between the siblings, partially due to their divorced parents forcing them to live apart; and the sense that the marshy land might swallow young Rosalie as she becomes increasingly disoriented. Rosalie is sympathetic here. When she finds the skeletal remains, she feels sad. But when a search team finds her hours later, no one believes her story about the human remains. The police search and find nothing. She and Beth search and find nothing.

When the story transitioned to the present day, the plot became bumpy. Rosalie was mourning the loss of Beth, who had been her wife, and has withdrawn from the world. But we didn’t know all that for quite a while, as the story focused on her need for routine and structure to keep going from some unknown past event. She had withdrawn from the world.

All of this makes sense. I got the sense that Rosalie was a woman struggling to keep her head above the waves of grief overwhelmed her. But it was slower paced in this section than many suspense novels are.

In fact, all the sections that focus on Rosalie emerging from her protective cocoon of routine are slow. It was beautiful writing. But there was a certain lack of tension that made these sections feel extraneous, as if they weren’t fully interwoven in the fabric of the story. They seemed to focus on character development at the expense of the plot. Or maybe the character arc at the expense of the story arc, if that makes sense.

By 40% of the way through the book, I still wasn’t feeling much suspense, and other than some odd threatening letters, I didn’t feel like the characters were in danger. Even the increasingly violent threats against their search didn’t grip me very much.

It wasn’t until about three-quarters of the way through the book that things clicked into place for me. Then it truly felt like a suspense novel. After that, the story raced, steamrolling everything in its path until I turned the last page for a satisfying, if abrupt, ending.

Characterization
I found Rosalie immensely likable. As the years between the skeleton’s discovery and the present, she had developed a habit of “talking” to the skeleton’s ghost. She named her Bogbean, after the flowers that she’d seen around the gravesite. There’s something rather sweet about this. Rosalie was a socially awkward, seemingly shy woman with few friends, and it was understandable that she might feel a bond with the dead Bogbean that no one besides her had seen and no one besides Beth believed that she had seen.

She tended to believe the best of people, but she didn’t comes across as naive, gullible, or stupid, in my opinion.

Cora was instantly likable, too. She was prepared to search the curraghs and determined to search every square inch of them. (She has measured it out on the map!) While she was obsessed over finding her sister Simone, she also longed for normality. She and Rosalie both needed closure.

Dallin, as Rosalie’s older brother, was a complicated and not always (or often) likable guy. He left town under a cloud, hasn’t spoken to their sick mother in years, and lies about, well, almost everything. Half the time I wanted to shake him and the other half of the time I wanted to smack him, and his sister apparently shared my feelings! He did get a small moment of redemption toward the end, though.

Narrative Style
One odd thing popped up in the narration. Bennett wrote most of the book from Rosalie’s 1st person point of view. But at random moments, short passages appeared in an unnamed person’s point of view. We read someone addressing the missing Simone as “you” and referring to an unknown man as HIM. It was easy to guess that these were from Cora’s point of view. But as she addressed “you” (Simone), the narration felt stylistically different from the rest of the book. It was also written in that deliberately ambiguous manner that is often used in current suspense novels.

I don’t think these passages served the story well. Sure, I got to know Simone a bit. But other than that, they came off as superfluous to the main story. Cora covered most of the information when she talked to Rosalie, and reading about “HIM” didn’t pique my interest.

Also, the use of “you” was off-putting to me. I’ve had some bad experiences with the 2nd person POV–don’t ask–and while this wasn’t technically 2nd POV, it flirted with it. This might just be my personal biases at work, and other people might find these passages suspenseful and intriguing.

Kudos to Rachel Bennett for experimenting with a different method of narrative storytelling, though. It’s always better to take the risk of trying something different in writing than to stick with the tried-and-true; even if it doesn’t quite work, you’ve still tried. The rest of the storytelling was well executed. Rosalie’s point of view felt natural and unforced.

Setting
All of this may sound as if I disliked the book. Au contraire. I did enjoy it. I read it in one day! It felt more like a mainstream novel with a strong suspense element, though, than a suspense novel.

I particularly liked the way Bennett uses the setting to develop the story.

This book could not take place anywhere other than the curraghs. Like the skeleton half submerged in the boggy land, every character struggles to stay on solid ground. Life threatens to suck them under, swallow them whole. Alone, they are like little girl Rosalie: wandering, searching for footholds, and fighting off panic.

Each of the major characters struggled to reach out to others. Dallin hid behind lies. Cora took shelter behind her maps and obsession Rosalie took refuge in her rigid schedules and isolation. Yet only working together could they be strong enough to make it through to the other side of the curraghs.

Recommended
This is a solid effort from Rachel Bennett. I’d recommend Little Girls Tell Tales to those who like slow-burning suspense novels rather than the high-octane, big-twist version. 3 1/2 stars rounded up to 4.

Trigger warnings: bereavement, homophobia, missing persons, child abuse, murder.

Thanks to One More Chapter Books, Harper Collins, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review will appear on my blog on May 18, 2020.

Highly enjoyed this very well written book and look forward to reading more from this writer in the future !!

Rosalie lives on the Isle of Man with her brother Dallin in an isolated village. One day she wanders off and loses herself in the wetlands and discovers a body. When her story gets around nobody seems to believe the little girl who tends to exaggerate. Fifteen years later, Rosalie still lives in her old house, but her brother has long since moved out and does not keep in contact with her. Rosalie is getting over a loss in her life and pretty much keeps to herself, but quite unexpectedly Dallin shows up at her door with a friend Cora. It seems that Cora has heard the story of Rosalie finding a body many years ago, and Cora is intrigued as her sister disappeared around that time, and Cora wants to explore the desolate area. We then learn the secrets that Rosalie has kept to herself and slowly discover that the village is not quite what it appears to be.
The story plot was good and I thank the publishers and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I wasn't completely taken in by this story. Unfortunately it just lacked a bit of oomph for me. The story trundled along quite nicely, but it was quite linear in atmosphere. Not really balancing out any of the negatives with a positive or including anything to bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion. The ending was a bit meh. I think if I give it another go in a couple of years I might enjoy it a bit more, but this time, it just wasn't for me.

Absolutely loved it. Will come to give my full review once pub date is closer.

Thank you to the writer, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

The story and the characters are more interesting than the ending. I found the solution to be far-fetched, but I liked Rosalie and her story and the mystery of the body in the marsh. And I also found the story of Cora and her missing sister intriguing. I devoured the book and wanted to know how the 2 stories would come together, but I was disappointed by the resolution.

Really good book. The characters are well written. The story line was good. I really enjoyed reading it.

Such a great book. Will read more from this author. Will be recommending this to other book readers who love this genre

For me, this was an enjoyable read but it didn't grip me and I wasn't desperate to get back to it once I'd put it down. I think part of the reason for this was that the main character was somewhat peripheral to the mystery, although she had been the one to find the body. The stakes didn't feel high enough for her in terms of the mystery - her story lay elsewhere.

I also thought it was a little depressing! I know thrillers aren't generally a laugh a minute, but some light to go with the shade would have been welcome.

Having said that, I found it vivid and was easily able to 'see' the characters and the setting.

Great book, haven’t wanted to put it down! Definitely stayed up way too late reading this enthralling read.