This book is so short, but it took me a little while to read it. It wasn’t that I disliked the book - many parts of it were beautifully written and I was interested to find out what happened. However, the novel is so focused on the surroundings and descriptions of things that my attention wandered frequently.

Things I Liked

1. Focus on Characters Other than the Police: Usually when there’s a book about a mystery, the focus is entirely on the people solving the case. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, the investigators are featured hardly at all. I appreciated the change and the chance to get to know the characters more strongly affected by the girls’ disappearance.

2. Prose: Lindsay’s prose is charming. It evokes a kind of tidiness associated with British upper-class society, but also inserts dark, chilling images that readers can miss if they aren’t careful.

3. Ending: Without spoiling the ending, I will say that it didn’t wrap up the way most missing persons mysteries do, and I liked that.

Things I Didn’t Like

1. Pace: This book moves rather slowly, enhanced by the fact that the narration indulges in a lot of description of the surroundings, the state of people’s feelings and day to day life, etc. As a result, it was hard to keep everything in my head since my attention wandered.

2. Treatment of Women: There are several female characters in this book that is described as overweight, dumb, and generally unlikable. While I usually want my female characters to be free to be unlikable, this book definitely upholds traditional beauty standards and uses them to dictate who we’re allowed to feel sympathy for.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in boarding schools, girls’ schools, mystery, missing persons, period drama, and the Australian landscape.