All the Missing Girls

Starred review from April 4, 2016
YA author Miranda (Soulprint) makes her adult debut with this fiendishly plotted thriller. Family business brings Philadelphia prep school counselor Nicolette “Nic” Farrell back to her hometown of Cooley Ridge, N.C., a place still fraught with the unsolved disappearance of her best friend, Corinne Prescott, right after their high school graduation a decade earlier. Nic unexpectedly finds herself still attracted to high school sweetheart Tyler, whose current girlfriend, Annaleise Carter, disappears the day after Annaleise texted police with questions about Corinne’s case. As Nic struggles to figure out what really happened to Corinne, who her demented father claims to have seen, she must also face some bitter truths—about her provocative BFF and herself. Miranda convincingly conjures a haunted setting that serves as a character in its own right, but what really makes this roller-coaster so memorable is her inspired use of reverse chronology, so that each chapter steps further back in time, dramatically shifting the reader’s perspective. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency.

Rebekkah Ross uses a coolly detached voice to narrate this spellbinding mystery. The story is told backwards, starting on the fifteenth day after the disappearance of Annaleise, neighbor of Nic and girlfriend of Tyler. Ten years earlier Nic's friend, Corinne, also went missing from Cooley Ridge. At that time, Nic and Tyler, among others, were the focus of the unsolved investigation. Ross rhythmically builds and dissipates the story's tension and excels with descriptive details and subtle character differentiation. Her pace is unrelentingly steady yet captures the many changes in the various flawed characters. As the layers of this atmospheric mystery are peeled back, Ross subsumes herself into the story and engages listeners in discovering the truth of what happened. S.C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine