Review - The Missing: C L Taylor

The following review has been posted on Amazon UK & US and Goodreads

There was such a buzz about this psychological thriller on social media, from bloggers and readers and I'm very easily led so had to buy the book to see what all the fuss was about. I wondered if it would live up to all the hype and in my opinion it did. This is a darned good read and it kept me engrossed until the very end.

I was quickly drawn into the very tense story of a family consumed with guilt after one of them - Billy, a fifteen year old boy - is missing from their home. Were any of the family members responsible? Do any of them have any idea what happened to Billy? Did any of them really know Billy? These are the questions the author wants the reader to wonder about - I did.

This is an apparently normal family which  reminded me very much of my own home when my children were teenagers, with people coming and going as if through a revolving door and sometimes moving in, so I quickly identified with Billy's mother and the anguish she went through and felt the tension and trauma, even though this luckily didn't happen to me.

All I can say is that either the author has experienced something similar herself, or she did some thorough research and/or had some excellent advice before writing the book

Another point - throughout the book we are very cleverly led up the garden path, so to speak, because interspersed throughout the chapters, we are shown a series of what looks like a private conversation going on via text messages between two people, which start to become more and more sinister as the story unfolds and we can only speculate about the identity of each person and exactly what has taken place between them.

I was totally surprised by the denoument and the ending. Highly recommended