Title: All The Missing Girls
Author: Megan Miranda
Publication Date: June 28, 2016
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Page Count: 384 pages
My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
I know a lot of people loved this book, so I spent most of the book waiting to see why. In the end, though, this one just wasn’t for me. I was bored the entire time up until the very end, the characters were flat and just…bad people, and the way the story was structured was confusing and I still don’t think it adds up.
We meet our narrator, Nicolette (Nic for short), a Philly-based young woman with a wealthy, lawyer fiancé. She might be a teacher? All I really gathered is that her boyfriend is rich and that she has a job that somehow allows her unlimited time off to return to her rural hometown to sell her family home. Here, she’s haunted by the disappearance of her childhood best friend, which doesn’t become any easier when another local young woman disappears. (The “all” in the title is misleading. There are, in fact, only two missing girls, which is arguably less exciting.) Nic, her family, and her angsty, dreamboat high school boyfriend are brought back into the thick of things as the woman’s disappearance is investigated, the last one still fresh in theirs, and the town’s, minds. Are the two connected? I mean, it would be a pretty lame book if they weren’t, right?
The structure of this book was the thing that really got me. The story is told in reverse, so after a brief present day introduction (Day 14), it goes back to Day 13, then Day 12, Day 11, and so forth. The concept is cool, but I expected a lot more; the execution was a mess. The final days in the mystery (Days 13 and 14), where a protagonist would generally start to put the pieces together, gave me the impression that Nic knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, then somehow solved the puzzle within a manner of minutes in the end. Instead of giving me “aha!” moments where everything connects, it just made me want to go back to the beginning and fact check every detail. (Which I won’t do because I didn’t enjoy the book nearly enough.) The author took a risk telling the story like this, and I don’t think it paid off in the slightest.
Between the muddled timeline and the lack of interesting plot points that made up 85% of the book, All The Missing Girls really didn’t do anything for me. It might have been better if I was able to sympathize with the characters, but seriously, these people were horrible. I can’t elaborate without spoiling things, but I really have nothing positive to say about any of them. Honestly, the rich fiancé might have been the most tolerable, and I don’t think that was the point of his character. He was the one who “didn’t understand” Nic’s small town lifestyle, but he’s really better off that way, so good for him.
When you finish a book and the only character you can sympathize with is the spoiled, frat boy fiancé…well, there are one-star ratings for a reason. I’ll give this one two, because the ending was interesting.
I am eager to give another Megan Miranda book a shot, because I don’t like swearing off authors after one chance. But I probably won’t be in a rush.
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