When twelve-year-old Sienna Voss vanishes without trace, three women are pulled into the desperate search for the missing girl.
Sienna's mother, Roxanne, will tear up this quiet creek-side town to find her daughter. She felt at home here, trusted her neighbors — but has one of them done something unspeakable?
Chief of Police Tamsin Drake needs to find Sienna quickly. And not just because she’s a good cop. She’s beginning to suspect the girl’s disappearance is connected to a dark secret she thought she’d buried years ago.
Cam-girl Cleo Monroe has a hunch she knows who took Sienna and why. If she’s right, that information could buy her a ticket to a better life.
As the search parties fan out and the clock runs down, the three women inexorably close in on the horrifying truth. A truth that only one of them will survive.
This book was… interesting. And I mean that in the most conflicted way possible, because the bones of a really compelling story are absolutely here. The plot is there. The characters are layered. There are twists, tension, and enough intrigue to keep the pages turning. And yet… something kept me from ever fully connecting with it the way I wanted to. So, let’s break it down, shall we?
Chloe was probably one of my biggest issues. It often seemed like she existed less as a fully realized character and more as a fetish for the author. She’s described as a “bigger girl,” which in itself isn’t an issue, but it felt odd how often her weight was emphasized, sometimes in ways that felt almost obsessive. References to her “soft skin and jutting belly” cropped up often enough that it started to stand out for the wrong reasons. And while I understand the author may have been trying to portray body confidence or challenge conventional desirability, it sometimes felt less empowering and more… fixated. Especially when seemingly every man who crossed paths with her was instantly captivated. At a certain point, it stopped feeling believable and started feeling like wish fulfillment.
Then there’s Orson, who was honestly fascinating in his own right. His disorder was handled in a way that felt both nuanced and complex, and I appreciated that there was more going on beneath the surface with him as I feel that helped us to understand him and why he did what he did. That said, I did find myself confused at times about whether he was supposed to be medicated or not, because the portrayal felt inconsistent from chapter to chapter.
And poor Sienna. I went back and forth with her a bit. Sometimes she felt very much like a believable twelve-year-old; worried about makeup, frustrated about not having a cell phone, but other times she seemed written much younger. That inconsistency occasionally pulled me out of the story. But I will give her this: she had more self-preservation instincts than some fully grown adults I’ve read lately, and I respected that. The girl had spunk.
As for the story itself, there were twists I absolutely saw coming (one reveal in particular was about as subtle as a brick through a window), but there were also a few that genuinely caught me off guard, which earned this book some bonus points. I can appreciate when a thriller can still surprise me, even if not every turn lands.
At the end of the day, while this didn’t completely work for me, I enjoyed it enough that I’d read more from this author.
DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.
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