The Missing: Claire Knight ~Guest Review~

EEEEEEK!  #Bookjunkies you are in for a treat today!  My fantabulous Guest Reviewer, Claire Knight has reviewed the equally awesome C.L. Taylor’s The Missing!  This is also on my TBR so #WatchThisSpace for my own thoughts on this book.

Synopsis:

You love your family. They make you feel safe. You trust them.

But should you…?

When fifteen-year-old Billy Wilkinson goes missing in the middle of the night, his mother, Claire, blames herself. She’s not the only one. There isn’t a single member of Billy’s family that doesn’t feel guilty. But the Wilkinson’s are so used to keeping secrets from one another that it isn’t until six months later, after an appeal for information goes horribly wrong, that the truth begins to surface.

Claire is sure of two things – that Billy is still alive and that her friends and family had nothing to do with his disappearance.

A mother’s instinct is never wrong. Or is it?

Sometimes those closest to us are the ones with the most to hide…

Claire’s Rating: 5/5

Claire’s Review:

The Missing: a mother’s nightmare, her teenage son goes missing without a trace.

You don’t find out at the beginning what has happened; you’re thrown in 6 months after the disappearance of Billy, Claire and Mark’s youngest son. The story alternates between their lives and conversations between two individuals on an IM service. I assumed (yes I know I should never assume anything) that one of the individuals was Billy but as to who the other person was, I had no idea. I couldn’t even decide whether they were male or female! With each conversation, I changed my mind.

I read C L Taylor’s The Lie last year and loved it. The author’s writing transported me to Nepal with all the imagery. With The Missing, I got into Claire’s head and felt the emotions of an anxious and stressed mother – I can only imagine how I’d feel if one of my boys went missing. I had only heard of fugues in respect of Agatha Christie’s episode after her husband left her – I must admit I didn’t know the medical term. I couldn’t imagine the fear and worry that Claire experienced – what had she done during the fugue?

C L Taylor has a way of drip feeding bits of the jigsaw to the reader but as with all excellently written psychological thrillers, the big picture isn’t clear until you have all the pieces of the jigsaw. By that point, you’re in the final throws of the book, desperate to get the whole picture! I was drawn into the story, reading at every opportunity my family would allow me to.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for sending me an ecopy of The Missing for my unbiased review.

Ooooooooh!!  I cannot wait to read this now!!!  Next time I meet the lovely C.L Taylor, I may have to do more than just a bow!  Click on the link below if this book grabs you as much as it does me! 

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