I couldn't put this down. I'm a slow reader, but I read for about 4 straight hours the other night just to finish it because I couldn't stop so close to figuring out what happened to Corinne and Annaliese!

All the Missing Girls is a book about Nicolette Farrell, a girl from Cooley Ridge, NC, who gets a call to say her father isn't well. She returns home to help her brother Daniel get their childhood home ready to sell (her mother died when she was younger). It's never stated exactly what is wrong with her father, but it's some form of dementia or Alzheimer's as they're never sure what reality he's in, if he's understanding them, if he understands that his wife is dead, etc. This complicates Nic's life when her father tells her that he saw "that girl" at their house.

Corinne.

Corinne was Nic's best friend in high school, but shortly after they graduated, Corinne disappeared without a trace. They had been at the fair, they had a fight -- which also involved Nic's boyfriend Tyler and her brother Daniel, as well as Corinne and, by association, their friend Bailey. That was the last night Nic ever saw Corinne. They had searched for her but a body was never found. They never figured out what happened.

When Nic comes back to town, she reconnects with Tyler, as she always does, despite her engagement to Everett, an up-and-coming Philadelphia lawyer. Tyler is dating Annaliese Carter, a girl who was about 5 or so years younger than them in school, and who lived on the property behind Nic's house, through the woods. Days later, Annaliese is missing too.

What I liked about this story is that it's told backwards. It begins 2 weeks into Nic's trip and tells everything that happened the day before, and then the day before that. So when you're reading something, you don't always have all the details about how it came to be that way. You might get those in another chapter or two. There were times when I actually had to go back and re-read parts that I'd already read just to try to form a picture of what happened.

And I did form passive theories as I read, but I didn't drive myself crazy trying to solve it the way I did with Gone Girl or Girl on the Train (there are so many books with Girl in the title these days). Mostly I just enjoyed reading it and the experience of finding out what happened. It was interesting, then, to see how it all came together and to see who was involved and in what capacity and to find out the parts she already knew as the story moved backwards, back to the beginning.

There are some things that aren't necessarily answered at the end and it's not neatly packaged up, but I kind of like that. There is no neat ending for these characters. There's just stages of life and the town that keeps them. I also like that Nic is not the most likable character (but she's not totally unlikable either).

Definitely recommended if you enjoy psychological thrillers and mysteries.