PattyMacDotComma's Reviews > All the Missing Girls

4.5★
Inside, outside, upside down. Backwards and forwards. We meet Nicolette, ‘Nic’, living in the city, engaged to Everett, a handsome, up-and-coming lawyer, when she gets a call from her brother. Come home. Dad’s in a bad way.

“Everett is old-money Philadelphia. His whole family is that way, like old stately buildings and cobblestone and ivy."

He’s smart, loving, caring and she has been looking forward to her new life with him. Ten years ago, she had fled Cooley Ridge with not so much as a fare-thee-well after the police stopped questioning her and her friends about her best friend Corinne’s disappearance, although the case was never solved.

“If my life were a ladder, then Cooley Ridge was the bottom—an unassuming town tucked into the edge of the Smoky Mountains, the very definition of Small Town, America, but without the charm.”

She doesn’t want to face the past, but as her dad once told her “You change. But the past, it’s still there. The only thing moving is you.”

Once she gets back, she sees her brother and his pregnant wife, visits her dad, who’s living in a care facility (because his memory appears to come and go) and settles into the empty family home. Her ex-boyfriend, Tyler, (from whom she’d also fled without warning) turns up with a new girlfriend in his truck, which affects her more than she’d expected.

Soon, the story jumps back to 15 days prior.

From there, each chapter then moves one day closer to the present, to where we left her. During each of these chapters, she reminisces about the past, but of course what she’s referring to harks back to information we don’t yet know. On Day 5, she might be thinking about something that happened on Day 4, which we aren’t privy to yet. So it might seem confusing, but for some reason, it works.

I’d liken it to when a kid comes and says:
“He hit me.”
And you ask “Why did he hit you?
“Because he wanted the remote.”
“Why did he want the remote?”
“Because he wanted to watch something different.”
“Why didn’t you give it to him?”
“Because it was my turn.”
“Why was it your turn?”
“Because the big kids said so.”
“Is that what they said?”
“Well, they said they were finished watching and we could have the TV, so we had to take turns.” “And . . . ?”
“And I picked it up first.”

See how it works its way backwards? It’s kind of like that. Kind of, but a lot more fun!

Ten years ago her best friend disappeared, and almost as soon as Nic returned, Tyler’s new girlfriend disappears just as mysteriously. A lot of time is spent in the woods which run behind her house, down to the river and over to this new girlfriend’s family’s home. It seems both girls may have disappeared into these wild woods full of hidden caverns.

Her dad keeps muttering phrases that make her fear he will tell the police something he shouldn’t. We don’t know what and aren’t sure if she knows either, but Everett (her White Knight!) flies into town to get an order to cease and desist. Leave the old fella alone. She’s relieved to see him but increasingly uncomfortable as she realises he knows so little about her past.

The characters are clear and well-described and stay in character. Relationships keep shifting but there are ties of loyalty that make them keep each other’s secrets.

She wishes vainly that she could have everything, have it all, all of whatever was good from the past and now. Like Russian dolls that have lots of dolls inside.

“That I could be all the versions of me, stacked inside one another, and find someone who would want them all. But that’s childhood. Before you realize that every step is a choice.”

Things fall into place as discoveries are made, both by Nic and by us. Good story!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the advanced review copy from which I’ve quoted so it may have changed in the finished publication.