The Girls Who Disappeared: A Novel

I gave 4 Stars to Claire Douglas’s latest thriller, “The Girls Who Disappeared.”SUMMARYJenna was planning to spend several days in a small town to investigate a very intriguing cold case for her true crime podcast. In 1998, there had been 4 teenagers involved in a car accident, but when the ambulance arrived there was only one girl, Olivia, in the car. The other three girls somehow disappeared while Olivia was blacked out and had never been heard from again. There were many theories about what had happened ranging from; them running away and starting a new life to an alien abduction. Plus, the town had a very haunted reputation which added a whole new element.Jenna was determined to find out what happened.Additionally, there are chapters with a seemingly unrelated story about a group of 20-something on a trip to Thailand staying at a mysteriously rich “friend or a friend’s” house.As Jenna starts asking around, talking to various residents of the town, she begins to realize that there is much more happening under the surface of the town.WHAT I LOVEDI loved the possibility of a haunting! That was super fun! I adore Brit-Lit and this was Brit-Lit at it's finest. I loved the characters, Claire Douglas managed to create characters who were simultaneously strong but vulnerable. I loved trying to figure out how the Thailand story fit into the plot. It was just a fun story to read!WHAT I DIDN’T LOVEThe ending didn’t seem super realistic to me. I was a little disappointed in it.OVERALLThis was a very fun book to read. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves a twisty thriller with great characters, and the possibility of a haunting.

But only one girl, Olivia, is in the car when the rescuers come, and she has to be cut out of the car.Twenty years later Jenna goes to the town to do a podcast about the missing girls. Amid threats and attacks she attempts to interview people who were around at the time of the accident. And with the help of Dale, a cop who is working the cold case, she helps to uncover facts that had previously remained hidden.

This was the first book I have read by Claire Douglas. I found this book to be an engaging and twisty read. This book had me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out the mystery. I loved all of the alternating points of view and how everything came together for the final conclusion. This was an outstanding book and highly recommend getting a copy!

The premise was clever, and the atmosphere was appropriately spooky. But the twists are not that satisfying--worse, they defy reason and common sense. Prose pedestrian. If you're the fence, keep riding.

After a very weary personal and professional year, this book was exactly what I needed to get me back on track. Once I got into the story, I couldn't put it down. The characters were relatable, the plot, with so many twists kept me looking for the next piece of the puzzle,and when I had it figured out, I never saw the ending. First time reader of this author but want to read more.

"Don't trust anyone. Everyone is lying."Trust me, everyone has something to hide in the very eerie atmospheric The Girls Who Disappeared by elite mystery author Claire Douglas.In 1998 four best friends are out partying with Olivia the designated driver. As they drive down Devil's Corridor, the small town's nightmare road of horror stories, Olivia slams on the breaks when she sees a man standing in the rainy road. They crash, Olivia passes out, when she comes to she's pinned to the steering wheel and her three friends are gone. They are never heard from again.On the 20th anniversary BBC podcaster Jenna arrives in the dreary dark town to investigate the unsolved mystery. Quickly, it's made clear she is not welcome with dead birds left at her door, notes on her windshield warning her to leave, and an attack from behind leaving her unconscious. All of these threats just enforces that she is close to figuring out the truth of that night.Award winning actress Joanne Froggatt and Clare Corbett are exceptional in their performances of this twisty mystery. From Jenna's stoic podcaster trying not to let her failing marriage effect her job, Olivia's PTSD from the trauma, to the pathetic cruel Wesley they make these characters real emotional beings.There are three time lines. The present, the 1998 timeline and a third from the 1980s about students vacationing in Greece that at first feels like it was placed in the book by mistake. It's definitely not there in error. Blew my mind how it's connected to everything in the past and present.This audiobook is like a Sunday night Masterpiece PBS Mystery Theater drama with all the clues, the red herrings, the wild reveals and, if you are a mystery lover like me, a perfect entertaining evening.I received a free copy of this audiobook from Harper Audio via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.*This Review Is For The Audiobook*

4 stars. This book was a Richard and Judy UK Book Club selection for Autumn 2022, which was how it came on my radar. I enjoy Douglas's books but hadn't read any for a while. Jenna is a journalist who is doing a podcast about an unexplained mystery from twenty years past when 4 girls were in a bad car accident but 3 of them disappeared and no one knew what happened to them. Jenna feels that by interviewing locals and hopefully, the one survivor, Olivia, she might get a new perspective on the story and maybe shake up the cold case a bit. Once she gets into the cabin in the reputedly haunted woods, things start to happen. Someone doesn't want her to find out what happened to the girls. I found the twist interesting but found the ending to be somewhat awkward and contrived, but I did enjoy the read.

I loved this book! Very safe whoever had a few marks on the pages but nothing major.Thank you

I would have have this book 5 stars but considering it arrived damaged I gave it a 4. That’s not the authors fault! The book was, a bit slow and didn’t truly pick up until around the last 150 pages. The twists were very good! Just when you think you have it figured out Claire throws things you never saw coming. Even the very last page of the book was insane!!

After loving every minute of THE COUPLE AT No 9, I just had to read more books by Claire Douglas! THE GIRLS WHO DISAPPEARED started off very promising, with a creepy country road setting, a car accident at night and the mysterious disappearance of three girls from the car, with only the fourth friend living to tell the tale. Fast forward twenty years, and the unsolved mystery comes to the attention of journalist Jenna Halliday, who believes it would make the perfect fodder for a true crime podcast.After my curiosity had been peaked, and I settled in to enjoy the creepy atmospheric setting, things unfortunately started going wrong for me. Whilst Jenna’s character remained rather bland and unoriginal, I found Olivia, the adult version of the fourth girl who survived the accident, irritating and immature. Neither woman had a voice that held my interest for long, and even the third – seemingly unrelated – thread was not compelling enough to hold off my sense of impatience. Nothing gets resolved in a hurry here, despite the local small town police being more then willing to spill all the beans of their recently re-opened case to a journalist (eye roll here). I felt that the creepy setting could have been used more to ratchet up tension, instead of constantly rehashing Olivia’s morose musings about the way her life has been destroyed by the accident. Perhaps the mystery would have worked better if Olivia had stayed in the third person, only to be slowly unveiled by Jenna’s investigation.Without a character to relate to and to root for, my overall feeling became that of boredom, to the point where I just wanted to flick to the end to find out the answers. In some cases, a clever twist near the end can revive a story, but this was not the case for me here, the convoluted ending being too far fetched to resolve anything satisfactorily. So sadly this was not the right book for me, even though it won’t deter me from picking up more books from this author in future.

Sorry Claire Douglas, I have to give my opinion...this book is a wate of good reading time. Dull. Awful, woeful story, completely unrealistic. Un-edited, times wrong. Uninteresting from beginning to end. Save your money. It's laughable to me that it has been described as captivating, twisty, gothic...one person said they were "breathless with anticipation ". Come on folks, this book is totally unbelievably bad!