<b>Read Completed 7/1/24 |</b> 3.5 stars
I finally picked this up after seeing a bunch of hype and yep... overhyped again (for me). This was a good, solid read but it just wasn't anything close to a 5 star book for me. I've read a lot of books like it that I think have done it better and I really didn't like the ending of the book. 

I almost didn't pick this up because the cover just looked very YA and I wasn't in the mood for young adult book (which is silly since I've loved some YA thrillers this year, including THAT'S NOT MY NAME by Megan Lally, which you should also read if you liked this, FYI). It kind of is with Ellie Black being the main focus, 17 when she went miss, 19 having returned, but there are a whole bunch of other POVs that are adult as well. It does kind of feel like it's halfway into YA and halfway into adult and it just doesn't know where it lands. 

The characters were just okay. Ellie has been through a lot of trauma so she was hard to connect with, naturally. Chelsey was okay but I didn't really feel like she had a ton of personality to carry the rest of the book. And we don't really get to know anyone else well enough. 

I didn't really like the plotting here. The reason for everything is revealed later in the book but it doesn't really connect with the beginning. Parts of the plot just didn't flow well for me and it was decent, but it wasn't going to make this a 5 star thriller for me by far. The twist at the end kind of cheapened some things from earlier.

I really didn't like her sister still being alive and being a part of this all like some Stockholm Syndrome thing. Instead of a twist, it just felt like the author was lying to me.

It was a solid read but it wasn't anything that's going to be super memorable for me. Also, check your trigger warnings. I got fairly dark in content, though there aren't really any explicit or overly violent scenes.

I really hate reading about abuse and especially sexual abuse of children. I didn't really love that this was the main plot of the book.