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A review by readingwitherin
Chloe Cates Is Missing by Amanda McHugh, Mandy McHugh
5.0
Warning: Some graphic moments when it comes to murders, and mentioning of affairs.
"My life isn't mine. It's not real. I just act out a bunch of stories to make our subscribers happy."
14 clicks is what kept Jennifer Scarborough from getting a $1000 bonus from her blog. This is a number she focuses on and keeps looking back on throughout the book. The blog is about her and her daughter Chloe Cates (a personality of sorts that Jennifer made for her daughter whose real name is Abigail), and their life. The problem though is that most of the stuff on the blog is fake, or stretching the truth. It's to the point now where Chloe (Abigail) no longer wants to do the blog and doesn't want to take photos for brand deals, all she wants is to be a normal teenager and be able to have friends and a boyfriend. On the morning of a brand blog post and photoshoot, Chloe is missing when Jennifer goes to wake her up in the morning. With her not anywhere in the house and her window open, Jennifer and her husband assume the worst has happened to her. They call the police and that is where things get even more interesting with this family. Once they are working with the police, one of the detectives is someone that Jennifer knew as a child (this makes it all complicated and messy).
"Clicks. Likes. Shares. People all over the country are searching for Chloe and tagging our accounts."
Everyone in the Scarborough family has been keeping secrets. Jennifer keeps secrets from her husband about the families financial situation and something that happened when she was a teenager, the husband keeps secrets about how he feels about all of this, the brother keeps secrets and helps Abagail have a little bit of normalcy, and lastly, Abagail has secrets as well. All of these secrets make for a lot of revelations to happen while they are talking to the police, and for all of us to see the realities of what it's like to be a child of a blogger who is the star of the show that her mom is directing.
"Do you know what it's like to hope that your daughter has had an accident? That something awful has happened to her, but it's fixable awful? Just so you can have an explanation that makes sense? So your child comes home?"
Overall I couldn't read this fast enough and I loved it! So many twists and turns and almost everyone is a suspect at some point or another with how this all went down. You see this isn't just a case of one missing girl, but by the middle of the book, two missing girls both have similar features and both kept secrets from their parents. These secrets end up leaving one of them dead, and one of them missing until at the last minute the detectives find her. My top suspects throughout the vast majority of this book was of course the mother, but also the brother, and then eventually even the dad. This family though, just wow. And the nerve of Jennifer to go about posting on social media while her daughter is missing and acting how she did about certain things. Just wow (truly left me speechless). So much lying and manipulation was happening, and all for just a few more blog clicks. It's just too much, but I do think it shows the toxicity that can happen in the blogging and vlogging world, especially when children are involved.
The ending of this book though… I wasn't expecting those last few pages, with how everything else had been going. Still liked it, but wow that took a dark turn at the end and really shows how much two of the characters were alike after all.
"I never had about being online. She told me I was special, but all I've ever wanted was to be normal. She wouldn't let that happen. She wanted me to be more. All of this is her fault."
I cannot wait to read more by Mchugh in the future!