A teenage girl goes missing from a small seaside town and the local police investigate. She has been lifelong school friends with three other girls and four boys who seem to the police to know something about her disappearance. The group set out into the woods to search for their friend with unexpected consequences.

I saw this on netgalley and was intrigued by the cover. I hadn't read any of the books by Simon Lelic, but I thought I would give this a go. I am so glad I did. I was hooked straight away and was reluctant to put it down. I'm quite a slow reader but I read this on 3 sittings. I would recommend this to anybody who like mystery thrillers.

Starting with the aftermath of a two-day search by five teenagers for their missing friend, gone now for six days, The Search Party is a twisting thriller which keeps you guessing until the end.
Intertwined with the interviews of the teenagers, DI Rob Fleet has returned to his home town with his secrets of his own together with a failing marriage. Throughout the book, we are provided with different perspectives during the interviews, each one slowly peeling away layers of the whole story and all the time revealing just enough to keep you reading.
It took me a while to get to grips with the style of the police interviews and having the story of DI Fleet gives you a welcome break from the voices of the teenagers whilst at the same time wanting to gt back to their story.
A great read.

This is the first book I've read by this author but I thought the idea was an interesting one. This book was not described as a Young Adult read but that's what it felt like, especially with the young people being at the heart of the story.

Sixteen year old Sadie has gone missing and police expert Robin Fleet is called in to investigate in what was his home town. A search party of her friends went after Sadie and tragedy ensued, so it is down to Fleet to unpick their accounts of Sadie's disappearance and their time in the woods looking for her. However, Fleet is fighting his own demons and this case is dredging up his past with painful repercussions.

I found this book quite hard to get into - the switching between narrators was particularly hard as they often blended together in my mind and I couldn't remember who was who. The sections with Fleet were more enjoyable, although he was a bit of a cliche at times. The book does keep you reading to find out what happens - Lelic's skill lies in his writing of tension and twists. However (and unfortunately) I couldn't care enough about the squabblings of a bunch of teenagers so the payoff at the end was a bit underwhelming for me personally.

As a YA read, this would be good, I think - teenagers may be more invested in the characters than me. I did finish the book but it wasn't really for me.

An enjoyable read, quite hard to put down. It's actually quite hard to read too in the way the narrative switches between characters, at least in places. For me there are a couple of criticisms: I didn't feel that the narrative contained enough clues to the eventual outcome, and in 'police procedural' novels the 'buffoonish superior officer' has become a cliche. Surely not all officers of superintendent and above are over-promoted idiots (although no doubt some of them are). Similarly, the main protagonist is a flawed character who triumphs despite his shortcomings. This is becoming another cliche in this genre. However it was still a good read!

First time I’ve read this author and I’m sorry I gave up. I didn’t finish the book as I felt it should be for young adults. Not one for me!

Sixteen-year-old Sadie Saunders has been missing for a week. The police have been searching for her with no success. The local town thinks she is dead. So, her friends Abi, Cora, Fash, Mason and her brother Luke thinks that the police are looking in the wrong place. So, they all decide to go on a search to find her. They go into the woods to search for her when things start to go a miss. When they find their phones go missing and they are left without no water. Instead of turning back home they carry on looking. The police have searched the nearby river and the woods, and they do find the body but, it is not Sadie’s.
I have enjoyed Simon Lelic’s previous novels, The House and The Liar’s room. So I was excited to receive a copy of The search party. The premise of this story was good, and it gripped me from the start. The characters were well developed but, you couldn’t tell who was telling the truth and who was not. I really liked these two thirds of this book but after that I got a bit disengaged as it just talked about the teenagers arguing and the ending for me was disappointing. 3.5 stars from me.

A book that keeps you guessing up to the very end. I loved this book as it was written from each persons aspect of what did happen or what they thought happened.......
The concept and how it all came about was something that would realistically you could see how it would happen ..... when younger people have friends that get together and do something that are not really logical but at the time it is to them......

The build up to the ending is enthralling and almost sent me off track as the search party tried to make sense of what would have happened to their friend...... was she dead or was she alive..... the out come tells you and you do not know until that point......

A fantastic read and held me all the way through...... recommended if you like the twist and turns of a crime thriller

This is a gripping and unsettling novel about a group of teenagers. It moves between each of their points of view and that of the police officer investigating the murder of two of them. We know one of the kids who have been killed but the identity of the second remains a mystery almost to the end. Fleet, the police officer has his own demons to deal with along the way too.

The central premise of the book is good, and the detective is quite likeable. And as a general rule I don't mind a story being told from several perspectives. My problem here is the form that the teenage POV chapters took - the police interviews, with the questions removed, read like stream of consciousness ramblings with the kind of detail that no teenager would ever give to an authority figure. That's where the book lost me. And there was so much of it! I just found myself skimming all of those sections in a hurry to get to the next Inspector Fleet section.


From the blurb I thought this was a YA book but with Fleet being such a main character I checked and apparently this is adult? If that's the case it definitely misses the mark, but I'm not actually sure who I'd recommend it to! Anyway, I did quite like it and most of my issues boil down to personal taste.

I loved it. It is an easy read yet original in format and absolutely riveting. I had no clue until the very end who could have done what. A well written mystery to be enjoyed

The Search Party By Simon Lelic and My first Novel by said Author, We follow story of Missing Sadie Saunders and the said search party by her group of close nit friends.
The book is told from police interviews with the friends but they are not really interviews more monologues and I found this really distracting as each friend answers questions that we are not privy too.
The plot is slow moving and nothing really happens as one lie is uncovered until we finally get to the truth of what actually happened.
The book is well written and the main Detective Fleet is a fairly unremarkable character Lelic feels us in on some of his backstory.
All that being said I did feel the compulsion to continue to turn the page and at the end of the day that's what its all about.
The book kept me Guessing right up till the very end and overall it was an ok read.

I like to thank Netgalley and the publisher and Author for the early ARCH.

Just about worth your time and hard-earned cash.

A good read with some Interesting characters and a great story line. The story held your interest and kept you guessing the outcome right till the end but found it a bit confusing when different people where telling their version of what happened. When someone goes missing and the events that happen to finally find out the truth make for a great who done it.

The Search Party is told through the point of view of Sadie’s friends: Abigail Marshall (Abi), Cora Briggs, Fareed Hussain (Fash), Mason Payne (Sadie’s boyfriend) and Luke (Sadie’s twin brother). They are being interviewed by the police about what happened when they decided to search the local woods for Sadie. They were in the woods for two days looking for her, until someone ends up dead. The book also follows the lead on the case, Detective Inspector Robin Fleet, who grew up in the town and follows his investigations too. Robin is an expert at finding missing people and he is determined to find out the truth.

The Search Party begins with a phone call to the emergency services. From there, I was taken on a thrilling race against time to find Sadie Saunders, a missing 15-year-old girl.

I really enjoyed this book — it is full of suspense and mystery. The story unfolds gradually, and at the beginning, you’re not even sure whose body has been found at the start. It’s incredibly gripping, with lots of twists and turns. You are never sure who is telling the truth — only that one (or more) of the teenagers are lying.

I really liked Robin Fleet. I felt a huge amount of sympathy for him as he struggles with his own past. He is determined to uncover the truth, not wanting to pin Sadie’s disappearance on someone unless he is certain that they are the culprit. I really respected that, especially as he stands up to his superiors and continues digging to make sure that happens.

While the teenagers described are not all likeable, they all feel real — they all sound like real teenagers. I could picture each of them very vividly. Their friendship group is intriguing, and each have their own problems and difficulties — probably exactly what brought them all together.

I read this in one sitting — I was gripped to the pages from beginning to end. It is brilliantly written. This is the first of Simon’s books that I have read, I will be certain to read more from him.

~

Also posted at http://www.lecari.co.uk/2020/04/book-review-the-search-party-by-simon-lelic/ (goes live at 6am on 18/04/2020) and on Goodreads. I will also post on Amazon UK when able (currently it is not able to be reviewed).

Sadie has disappeared, the police are searching for her, but her 5 friends don’t believe they are looking in the right place. So they form their own search party and head into the woods....and that’s when it all goes wrong. Told from the perspective of Sadie’s 5 friends and a police officer, this book reveals events bit by bit through the eyes of Sadie’s friends and a cop who has trying to get to the truth. I liked this book and liked the idea of revealing what really happened slowly through the recounting of the 5 different voices. However, these 5 voices could be hard to follow at times as each seemed to have something to hide and it was difficult to keep up with what was being said with the snippets of truth that were being revealed. However, the last third of the book really grabbed my attention and I raced to find out what really happened. An interesting twist at the end brought the book to a dramatic conclusion.

I'm afraid this novel's style of prose didn't work for me. I would politely suggest it is more of a young adult genre, as the language flits from one teenager to the other, and it is in such a fashion that it is difficult to decipher when the switch occurs.

I'm sure if this is the style you gravitate toward, it is very good. I did try awfully hard over many days to get engrossed, but a quarter of the way through, it didn't capture my interest and I found it hard work. After a week or so, I gave up and jumped to the end to at least be excited by the whodunit, but sadly it was anything other than thrilling.

I have learned I must stay with the genre that keeps me engaged, psychological thrillers.

Enjoyed this thriller and I’ve never read one from the perspective of a search party before which made it stand out.

The writing is a bit stilted which slightly prevents engagement but otherwise enjoyable.

In The Search Party, a group of five join together to look for their friend Sadie, who has been missing for a week. They suspect the police are looking in the wrong place, but as they venture further into the woods, they start to become desperate. Friendships unravel and they begin to suspect one another of being involved.

The story is narrated using police interviews of the friends, and also follows lead investigator, DI Fleet, who has his own past involving the town to come to terms with.

To begin with the positives, this book is very readable! I spent only a day reading it. It’s fast paced and has a good deal of twists and turns to keep you reading. The use of police interviews to drive the narrative was also well utilised.

In some parts I was unable to suspend disbelief, for example all five friends seemed to have eidetic memory, being able to relay exactly what others said or did whilst they were stumbling through the woods. There were also some decisions that some of the characters made that didn’t seem to make much logical sense.

This novel is set in the aftermath of the disappearance of 16 year old Sadie Saunders; her close friends are determined to find out what happened to her, and set out as a search party. Among the group is Mason, who the townsfolk have already decided is responsible for her murder. The group fragments and falls apart during the search as suspicions and rivalries come to the fore. The actual hunt and back story is very interesting and engrossing. Even though the ending failed to convince me, I would still recommend this as a real page-turner.

First time author for me and an Interesting premise that reads for me more like YA fiction? Doesn’t really get going enough for me but I appreciate that’s it a well written and well plotted mystery with all the twists and suspense that makes me predict this book will do very well. Just didn’t quite do it for me