Book Review: All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

Like the spellbinding psychological suspense in The Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, Megan Miranda’s novel is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women—a decade apart—told in reverse.

It’s been ten years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared from Cooley Ridge without a trace. Back again to tie up loose ends and care for her ailing father, Nic is soon plunged into a shocking drama that reawakens Corinne’s case and breaks open old wounds long since stitched.

The decade-old investigation focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, and Corinne’s boyfriend Jackson. Since then, only Nic has left Cooley Ridge. Daniel and his wife, Laura, are expecting a baby; Jackson works at the town bar; and Tyler is dating Annaleise Carter, Nic’s younger neighbor and the group’s alibi the night Corinne disappeared. Then, within days of Nic’s return, Annaleise goes missing.

Told backwards—Day 15 to Day 1—from the time Annaleise goes missing, Nic works to unravel the truth about her younger neighbor’s disappearance, revealing shocking truths about her friends, her family, and what really happened to Corinne that night ten years ago.

My Review:

Most of the time the story is told backwards which had me resetting every chapter. Even though there’s a page before every backward chapter that lets you know, The Day Before, I had to remind myself ‘This is the day before. The stuff I just read happened after the events in this chapter‘. I cannot remember ever reading a book told in this manner. I thought this would annoy me and cause me to dnf the book, but I found that this structure worked. The effect of this structure on the story would not have been the same had I had a moment of rebelliousness and read the ‘backward’ chapters in chronological order.

The narrators were unreliable and I didn’t like any of the well-defined characters but again, it worked.

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