The Missing by C L Taylor

The Missing by C.L. Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 2 days

Pages - 400

Publisher - Avon

Blurb from Goodreads

You love your family. They make you feel safe. You trust them. Or do you…?

When fifteen-year-old Billy Wilkinson goes missing in the middle of the night, his mother, Claire Wilkinson, 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?


My Review

A family torn apart by the sudden disappearance of 15 year old Billy Wilkinson, son, friend, brother, loud, cheeky, just your normal 15 year old kid. There has been nothing for 6 months, now after a repeat appeal things go from bad to worse. The family is falling apart, Claire Wilkinson the mother is taking it hard, losing time and having blackouts and will stop at nothing to find out where her boy is. The family, as most do, have their own secrets and slowly things start to surface, the truth will always out but are the Wilkinson's ready for the truth and will any of it help to find Billy?

The book opens with an online interaction between Jackdaw44 and ICE9 on 5/2/15, we then visit 5/8/2015, 6 months after billy has disappeared and Claire is getting ready for the appeal. The chapters flip between online interactions with those two users whom you can only guess at their identities the more you see the chats. The rest of the story follows the family, Claire, her husband Mark, Jake who is Billy's brother and Jake's live-in girlfriend Kira, how they are coping or rather not. The stress proves too much for Claire who begins to lose time and have blackouts, coming to and not knowing where she is. Claire is our narrator and we experience a lot of the emotions and scenes through her eyes although she herself is not exactly reliable due to her bodies response to the stress she is under.

You are drawn immediately into a family in chaos, struggling to get through each day just trying to find their loved one. As the story progresses we learn more about the family members, their personalities and question almost every bit of information we are given. I really felt for Claire, the author does an amazing job of taking you through the emotional rollercoaster Claire is on, the desperate journey to find her son and learning some home truths along the way.

This book for me was about family dynamics, how the absence of one family member can impact on those desperate to find their loved one. The strain on relationships it can have and like all families, even the smallest of secrets examined and questioned in case it was a precursor for Billy disappearing. It was a page turner for me, I was desperate to find out where Billy was, what happened, who the online chatters where and some closure on all of the issues that are dottered throughout the story. Taylor does a great job to engage and entice the reader from pretty much the first chapter, 4/5 for me this time. I have read all of this authors work and look forward to her next, thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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