Welcome to my review of Missing by K.L. Slater. I love K.L. Slater. I’ve read many of her books and was excited to see her newest release. I buy all her books and couldn’t wait to read this one. It skipp4d right to the top of my To Be Read pile.
I’ve known him all my life. I know he has taken my daughter. His mother says she can help me. But she’s the last person I can trust…
Samuel lived next door when we were children. We were inseparable. But he didn’t like sharing me with my adored little brother. And one terrible night, he got rid of my brother forever…
Now, years later, he’s free. And my daughter is missing.
I turn on my baby girl’s unicorn nightlight and bury my face in her pillow, my heart breaking. I know Samuel has her – he blames me for ruining his life, and even after all this time, he still doesn’t like to share.
As darkness falls, there’s a knock at my door and I open it to see Samuel’s mother. She says she can help me.
I know I can’t trust her, but I don’t have a choice. With each step I take, my fear grows stronger. Can she help me find my daughter? Or does she know something about what really happened all those years ago? Something that could stop me from saving my baby girl…
Kim is the number one bestselling author of sixteen psychological crime thrillers. She has sold over two million copies of her books worldwide. She has also written four Carnegie-nominated Young Adult novels as Kim Slater for Macmillan Children’s Books. Kim has an MA in Creative Writing and lives with her husband in a small Nottinghamshire village.
Author website: www.KLSlaterAuthor.com
Twitter: @KimLSlater
Facebook: KL Slater Author
Instagram: KLSlaterAuthor
As K.L. Slater often does, we jump right in, and we find ourselves inside the head of eight-year-old Jimmy Bennett as he is locked in an old unit and takes his last breath. It’s instantly devastating, and I am compelled to find out more as soon as possible. My initial thoughts are that this will be a fast-paced, quick read and I will be done within a day or two.
From there, we jump 26 years later. After 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence, Samuel is just being released for killing Jimmy. We join Jimmy’s older sister, Josie, a café owner and single mother to her eight-year-old daughter, Ivy. The book is told from multiple perspectives, mainly those of Josie and Samuel’s mother, Maggie. Samuel was always obsessed with Josie as a child, and Maggie is worried that his years in prison have made him a hardened criminal now; how might that affect his relationships and obsession with Josie?
I enjoyed the beginning of Missing; it looks at the impact of one person’s actions on several lives and the long-lasting effects of Jimmy’s death on both Josie and Samuel’s families.
The characters felt well developed. Samuel feels manipulative and chilling. You could easily imagine him playing a trick on someone younger and have no idea what he is capable of now after all those years incarcerated. However, Maggie is also very intriguing. She is a devoted and loving mother. She has supported Samuel all these years but seems to have been stalking Josie too. Maggie’s perspective does reveal some plot twists, which help make sense of a lot of the plot, but ultimately, I found her frustrating; her ‘help’ wasn’t helpful, and the way her brain worked was somewhat twisted.
Josie is another issue, though. She wasn’t particularly likeable and, at times, was utterly infuriating! Though mildly relevant to the plot, the fixation on her biscuit baking dragged and got in the way of the plot a bit. Just one or two mentions would have sufficed enough to point out that she was successful and busy.
It felt like there was a lot of overexplaining and repetition between the different points of view. I felt like it started well and then got lost meandering through the plot to the end. The leaping in time hindered the story a little too.
The ending wasn’t my favourite either! There were plenty of twists in the mystery of who took Ivy and what happened, but it was too far-fetched. The obvious conclusion was not here and didn’t really make sense. It came out of nowhere and was utterly unrealistic. The ends were tied up, but a little too loosely and some characters were left hanging a little, with some relationships turning around unrealistically quickly. I also disliked the three future endings, one week later, three months later, and finally eighteen months later.
What could have been a riveting, quick read turned into a slightly frustrating, drawn-out read for me. It took me six days to get through it as I kept putting it down or had to go back and see what had happened before. However, I did enjoy some parts. The premise was great, and the beginning descriptions of Jimmy were brilliant and chilling, perhaps even more so if you have children yourself. Some of the twists were good, but I think I just had enough by then.
Maybe I have been spoilt by too many excellent books by K.L. Slater previously, she has written some blinding thrillers, but unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them. Not even her great writing style could style this one out.
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| Title | Missing |
| Author | K.L. Slater |
| Series | N/A |
| Format | eARC |
| Page Count | 344 Pages |
| Genre | Psychological Fiction |
| Publisher | Bookouture |
| Release Date | 19th May 2022 |
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