Two women thrown together over the disappearance of fifteen year old Edie, The Missing is quite a slow-burner to start with but picks up pace towards the end.

Told from the perspective of both women from both then; when Edie first went missing, and now, The Missing is well written but I found it quite flat. It's not that I disliked it, I just didn't find it particularly enjoyable and I wasn't really intrigued as to what had happened to Edie.

Single mum Samantha is a chain-smoking loner with her own anger issues making her account unreliable. She is clearly disillusioned against the truth of her daughter's behaviour and personality, trying time and time again to quiet the voice in her own head which tells her how she really felt about Edie and her disappearance. Her behaviour is erratic and obsessive as she claws for the truth.

Frances has a past we don't really learn about in anything more than brief snippets of details or memories. There's no real explanation of her past and I didn't feel it really added much to her character. I felt like she was the character I liked the most but unfortunately her story isn't nearly as detailed as Samantha's.

There are a few different "suspects" in this book and it feels very slow as Samantha works her way through each of them to try and figure out what people know.

I wasn't a fan of the long chapters in this book. I personally felt quite frustrated to turn the page to a new chapter only for my kindle to tell me "time left in chapter: 52 minutes"! I think they made the book feel more of a slog and given the breaks in each chapter, could definitely have been chopped down to smaller chapters. The book is quite a heavy read with desperate, depressed Samantha's accounts taking up the majority of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Daisy Pearce and Amazon Publishing UK for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Okay so uh-ho. this one is difficult to review. Because I wanted to like this so much buttttt.....

Sadly, I wasn't super impressed with this book.
I thought it had great potential, but in the end I was left feeling highly underwhelmed.
The writing was fine, however, the characters were so unlikable. Not unlikeable in that way where you still love them and kind of question yourself for doing so.
They were just boring and flat. The story really fell short for me too. It just wasn't blowing me away at any point.

This one very clearly wasn't for me.

Thanks to NetGalley.

3.5 starw rounded up to 4

Fifteen year old Edie Hudson disappears without trace. It's now twenty years later and Samantha (Edie's mother) still does not know what happened to her daughter. Frances is interested in what happened to Edie. She discovered that her husband, William knew Edie. Thrntwomwomen accidentally meet and join forces to try and find out what happened to Edie.

The story is told from Samantha and Frances's perspectives. There seemed to be quite a lot of backstory at the beginning of the book but the more you read the more you understand why this was necessary. The story flips between then and now. I liked the friendship that developed between the two women. The ending was a surprise. There's some good twists to keep you interested.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Amazon Publishing UK and the author Daisy Pearce for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Marriages aren't always what they seem and neither are people. Who can you really trust? Who should you really trust?

This book is told from two points of view: Frances, who seems to have a deeply troubled past and is married to William who "rescued" her although might be having an affair now, and Samantha, whose 15-year-old deeply troubled daughter vanished without a trace 20 years earlier. Frances and William are in his hometown because his mother, who lives with his closeted brother, has a severe fall, and while there, Frances discovers that William was dating Edie when she disappeared. Can Frances help Samantha finally get some answers after all these years of purgatory?

I really liked the friendship that develops between Frances and Samantha. It's nice to see a friendship between two women that isn't torn apart because of a relationship with a man or because of jealousy. I also really liked that there was just enough backstory for us to understand the motives of most of the characters even if we lack full explanations.

This was definitely a quick, fun read to start off the summer, although maybe not as heart-pumping suspenseful as it could have been for a thriller. I would have liked a bit more teasing out the whodunnit, since most (but not all) was easily guessed very early on.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the arc. It has not influenced my opinion.

The Missing is told in two points of view. Samantha - the mother of Edie Hudson, a teenager who disappeared years before and Frances - a woman who becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of Edie’s disappearance.

I felt like there was an awful lot of backstory at the beginning of this book. As I got further into the book, I understood why this was needed, however; it meant I found the book hard to get into.

The two points of view got confusing, especially at the start, I found it hard to remember which part was whose and it jolted me out of the story a lot. I also found it hard to distinguish between Samantha and Frances’s POV which got quite disorientating.

I loved the friendship Frances and Samantha struck up. Samantha seemed like she’d been lonely for so long, as everyone around her insists that she just needs to move on from her daughter. Frances seemed to get that that wasn’t possible for her, that she couldn’t move on until she knew what happened to her daughter.

The ending wasn’t much of a surprise - more of a ‘oh it all make sense now’ kind of ending. I wasn’t disappointed but neither was I crazy about it either. Saying that - the writing was what really shone about this book - lyrical and beautiful. It kept me reading until the end.

Frances opens a box of worms when she finds a photo of her husband William with Edie, a girl who went missing when she was 15. Was Edie William's girlfriend? What does he know? That's the question not only for Frances but also for Samantha, Edie's mom who has never gotten over the loss of her daughter. This goes back and forth in time and between Samantha and Frances, which adds to the story. You, like me, might guess some of the answers these women seek but not all of them. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A quick read.

I really loved this novel, I love the idea of writing about a cold case. I enjoyed the flashback from past to present and found it simple to keep up with great read!

Thank you netgalley and publishers for the opportunity to read The Missing in exchange for my honest review.

This was a VERY good mystery. The author did a great job confusing the reader. This story is about a girl gone missing , and 20 years later had never been found. Is she dead? Did she run away? Who last saw her? These are all questions that we as the reader must ask ourselves. The story goes back and forth between two characters both past and present versions of themselves, which adds the the depth of the storyline.
Psychological thrillers always do a phenomenal job of misleading the reader over and over, and this story did just that. Her mother has been searching for her for twenty years with the hope that she is still alive, diffing up clues from her past and holding on to the hope that she is off somewhere living a new life. However, there are hints that she may actually have done something to her daughter that caused more than just a chip on her shoulder. I give this book high ratings, mainly because it was very well written and a difficult ending to uncover!

A suspenseful whodunnit, told in alternating flashbacks and present day scenes. I really appreciated how Edie was portrayed as a difficult child and found all the main characters to be realistic and multi-faceted.

This book was a bit too dense to be a "thriller"! Too much detail ... too much going on. If it were a bit less dense, it would have been a much more enjoyable read. All of the characters were unlikeable - including Edie who goes missing at age 15. The way it's written, you have absolutely zero empathy for her and her mother, who spends 20 years waiting for her daughter to come home.

The plot had a decent twist - but could have been so much more powerful with less verbosity.

Thank you to Daisy Pearce, Amazon Publishing UK and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. This review was also published on Goodreads.

The Missing centres around Samantha, whose daughter Edie went missing two decades earlier. The papers said 15 year old Edie was “no angel”, it made her disappearance all to easy to ignore. When a chance encounter with Frances occurs Samantha’s hope is reignited in finding her daughter.
Frances is also compelled to find answers too, after finding a photo of her husband with the girl who went missing.
I was totally engrossed by this. I was berating myself for not being able to stay up all night to get through it in one sitting. The characters were flawed and it made them that much more real. I felt like I was right there with them, feeling their desperation for the truth. I had so many theories going through this, none of them right. The pacing was perfect, the plot unfurled beautifully and all the little details enriched the writing. This was my first Daisy Pearce book and it most certainly won’t be my last.
The Missing is available from the 9th June.
Thank you Netgalley and Amazon Publishing for my copy to review!

Thank you Netgalley for providing me a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The story is told from two different perspectives: Frances and Samantha. Frances is an unemployed woman who finds out her husband is cheating on her with a random woman on the internet. She is extremely disappointed that he is cheating, but more so, disappointed that the reality of her becoming a mother is slowly dwindling. Samantha's plot line takes place (mostly) about 20 years before Frances. She is the mother of a rebelious teenager, Edie. When Edie goes missing, Samantha's sanity begins to unravel. Little do Frances and Samantha know that they are both familiar with someone who can crack the case on Edie's disappearance, but it may cost them their lives.

If I'm being honest, that summary is probably more interesting than the actual book itself. I wanted to love this book so badly, but I struggled to consistently read it. I would go through spurts where I would read for 30 minutes to an hour and be totally immersed in the story line, but I never got excited to pick up the book and read it. I did enjoy Pearce's dark writing and how she was very descriptive, even grotesque at times, because it set the tone for the book. It definitely reminded me of a Lisa Jewell novel in this sense. The last 25% of the book I was totally invested and flipping pages quickly, and I was definitely shocked by the ending. The end of the novel felt the most put together.

I had difficulty with staying interested in the book because there were many time jumps and the chapters were extremely long. When my Kindle says it will take me 20 minutes to finish a chapter, I often only read one chapter, which is definitely a personal preference and not of fault of the author. The different time jumps did make it difficult to follow. There were a lot of time jumps which made it difficult to follow the plot, especially when I was unsure how Frances and Samantha were connected until about 30% of the book.

Unfortunately, because I really only liked the ending of this book, I have to give it a 2 or 2.5 out of 5 star rating.

Thank You to NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK for this ARC!!

Teenager Edie Hudson was nobody’s little darling, which made vanishing all too easy. Two decades later, she’s been forgotten by everyone except her mother, Samantha. When she meets Frances, she at last starts to hope for answers.

Because Frances is obsessed with the mystery too, after finding a photo of her husband with the girl who disappeared.

What really happened all those years ago? And just how dangerous could it be to find out?

Initially I found the book too dense but since premise of this book really intrigued me I went on reading. I just couldn't rest until I knew what really happened to Edie. The book gets better half way through since by then the author provides us with many suspicious characters and a sense of creepiness with witchcraft!!

While the ending did not have a wow factor, it was still surprising.

Unfortunately, I agree with other reviewers who found this book a little jumpy and slow-moving. I just wasn't hooked, and that made it harder to continue reading. However, the premise of this book really intrigued me and I'd be open to reading something else by the author.

I haven't read anything before by Daisy Pearce but I will start to after enjoying this book. The book was well written and intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the copy of The Missing.

The Missing by Daisy Pearce is one I will not forget for a very long time. It's the type of novel that stays with you and provokes you to pick up another Daisy Pearce book. I had never read one of her novels, but after reading this, I became a forever fan. I felt that I was actually there with Samantha Hudson as she searched for her missing daughter. The characters were all flawed, which made them so relatable. I felt like the skeletons in their closets made them real. The twist at the end shocked me and I stayed up way too late to finish. This novel is definitely one I would recommend to any thriller/mystery lover.

Wow, I am speechless! Told in back and forth points of view of both Samantha and Frances and also in two time periods, The Missing does such a great job at portraying the feelings and emotions of two women in two different situations. The grief Samantha is feeling is perfectly coupled with the uncertainty that Frances feels in her marriage. Both women were strong and resilient in their own ways, and I loved it.

The use of imagery in this book had no business being as good as it was. I could read a whole novel just on Daisy Pearce describing a morning sunrise. It was absolutely stunning.

The twist at the end of the book didn’t WOW me, but I didn’t care. I really really enjoyed this book and hope you’ll all give it a go when it comes out!

This book just was not for me. From the beginning I just could not get into the story - it felt very flat and forced. It didn’t hold my attention and the characters were all pretty unlikable. There weren’t any real big surprises and the ending was pretty ho-hum. I really enjoy a good mystery/thriller but this one just didn’t pass muster.

Wow! It’s going to take me a while to recover from this book - in a really, really good way!!

This story was packed with a punch and a half! I devoured it and was thinking about the story even when I didn’t have the book in my hands... and when that happens, YOU KNOW IT’S GOOD! There were so many characters involved - suspicious, crazy, and vengeful ones, and twists and turns at every chapter.

The Missing is about a rebellious 15-year-old girl named Elizabeth (Edie), who leaves home one day and never returns. Her mom, Samantha, stops at nothing, even decades later after she goes missing, to figure out what happened to her. Is she dead? Is she missing? Is she living in another town with a new family?

Meanwhile, Francis, the wife of a man that supposedly has a connection to Edie is introduced.

When Francis and Samantha accidentally meet, the two stories collide, turning it into a whirlwind of psychological craziness!
Some of the characters in the story were not likable and that’s what made me like them more. I had a genuine hate for some of them but that was the whole point in my opinion!

It was a gripping page turner that was suspenseful and fast-paced. This was my first novel written by Daisy Pearce and it definitely won’t be my last!

If you like psychological thrillers, go get this book on pre-order ASAP!

Solid story. I liked this book a lot.

I don't want to give too much away, as to keep the suspense for future readers, but this had me riding a whirlwind of theories and still managed to shock me.

The narrative is told on Samantha's and Frances' "then and now" perspectives. Their paths cross over a comon subject: Edie's (Samantha's daughter) disappearance 20 years earlier.

We have a few unique characters, their distinct traits well explored enough to peak our interest and make us suspicious of each and everyone one of them. I think the author threw some misleading hints on there, to keep us guessing. Or maybe I was just reading too much into it.

I was soooo wrong about where this was going most of the time. A good mystery for sure.

Thanks NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK, for sending me this ARC in exchange for my honest review!