What a thrilling series this author has created. Can't wait for the next installment. Lottie is a brilliant complex character a real female maverick detective.
Highly recommended read

3 and 1 / 2 stars

This book goes back and forth between Kosovo during the war and present day Ireland where Detective Lottie Parker and her family live.

As Lottie is leaving for work on her first day back after the horrible events of the last book, a woman and her son show up on her doorstep. The woman speaks very little English and leaves a note with Lottie telling her to contact another woman for a translation. She is asking for Lottie’s help.

Lottie and her team are assigned the case of a murdered pregnant woman. They barely get started when another murdered woman shows up. How are these two cases linked? Who are these women? They first must identify them.

As more girls go missing, the tension mounts. At the same time, Lottie’s life seems to be falling apart. She is single-minded to the point of almost ignoring her family. She is dependent on Xanax and unable to see the effects it is having on her.

Another review stated, “I also found the number of coincidences hard to swallow.” I must agree with this assessment. I almost lost interest in places because of Lottie’s attitude and the convenience of it all. Although the book was well written in places, it didn’t move along as quickly for me as other reviewers have stated.

I want to thank Netgalley and Bookouture for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

I would like to thank Bookouture and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Stolen Girls’, the second in the Detective Inspector Lottie Parker books by Patricia Gibney, in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.
Lottie, together with her colleague DS Boyd, searches for answers after finding the bodies of three women buried in trenches whilst road works are in progress in the centre of Ragmullin. The bodies are thought to be those of asylum seekers and Lottie needs to discover their identities together with who killed them. But Lottie is haunted by the memories of her late husband Adam and is struggling to keep her family together, whilst Boyd comes face to face with his ex-wife during investigations.
I thought the book was well-written and at times chilling to read, but I found it difficult to understand Lottie’s behaviour towards her colleagues, and especially Boyd, which I thought discourteous and disrespectful and which detracted from my enjoyment of the story.

Brilliant brilliant brilliant, didn't think this could keep me as hooked and book one but by heck it did! Amazing fantastic writing didn't want it to end!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Bookouture for an advance copy of The Stolen Girls, the second novel set in the fictional Irish town of Ragmullin to feature DI Lottie Parker.

After a few months off to help her children recover from the events of the first novel, The Missing Ones, Lottie comes back to work and has to dive straight back into another murder, that of a young woman found in some roadworks. As the bodies pile up the case widens into something much more.

The Stolen Girls is an extremely busy novel with something going on in every chapter, almost on every page. It makes for a good read as it captures and holds your attention but can be a bit sloppy at times as Ms Gibney tries to hold it all together. I also found the number of coincidences hard to swallow. Kosovans who knew Lottie's dead husband turning up in Ragmullin, Lottie's daughter Chloe in the thick of things (after her other two children involved in the previous novel) and her sidekick Devlin's estranged wife Jackie turning up with her criminal boyfriend and all involved in the murders.

The tension, however, is well done. The novel is mostly a third person narrative from Lottie's point of view with a switch to glimpses of the killer and some italicised chapters on an unnamed young boy's escape from the killing fields of Kosovo after watching the murder of his family in 1999. I spent some time wondering where these latter excerpts fitted in so they held my attention while not being strictly relevant at the time to the plot.

I'm unsure about Lottie's character. She is obviously kind hearted and still grieving the death of her husband from cancer 4 years earlier but she is slapdash and chaotic in both her home life and investigations. It is understandable and easy to identify with as many working mums live the same kind of life but it makes for frustrating reading. I want to shake her and tell her to stop the mad dash through life and think clearly, as many of her colleagues tell her. And yet. I love her put downs to her colleagues when they overstep the mark and her desire to protect those around her. All the characterisation is extremely well done from the stroppy Superintendent Corrigan to the casual Kirby.

I enjoyed The Stolen Girls and have no hesitation in recommending it as a good read.

AMAZING, BRILLIANT, THE BEST BOOK I'VE READ IN A LONG LONG TIME!!! It's not often I've been left speechless after reading a book but this time I was!!! This is Patricia Gibneys second book and I honestly thought that after reading her first book called The Missing Ones she couldn't get any better but my God she's done it!!!! From the very start I was gripped and couldn't put it down!!! I read through the night!!! With twists and turns right the way through to the end!! If I could have given it ten stars I would have!!! Not alone would I recommend this book I am begging people to read it!!! Patricia Gibney please hurry up with the next one!!! Thank you netgalley for the absolute honour of reading it.

This is Patricia Gibney’s 2nd novel, following her amazing debut, The Missing Ones. I gave The Missing Ones 5 stars, and I liked this one even better… but alas, goodreads won’t let me give it 6 stars.

Welcome back to Lottie, Boyd, Kirby and company… ignoring the plot for a second, one of my favorite things about this book was delving further into these characters lives. I enjoy their personal stories as much as the main plot of the book.

Some girls are missing, some girls are dead and Lottie and company are racing to figure out what is going on! As was I… I devoured this book as much as I could as time allowed. And I was allotted the luxury of spending most of my Mother’s Day reading (thanks to my awesome teenage boy!).

I had commented in my previous review how much I loved her fictional town of Ragmullin and during The Missing Ones, it was a gloomy, dreary winter – adding to the creep factor. Now it is spring in Ragmullin and even with the snow and sleet gone, it’s still just as creepy as ever… I could practically hear the sounds of creepy trains during every outdoor scene.

I really don’t want to comment on the story itself because I don’t want to give anything away. But know that it was just as amazing and twisty as her first novel!

I think I read through the grapevine that she was contracted for four books – I absolutely cannot wait until the next two come out. Books like this make me happy dance!

Brilliant! Patricia Gibney has done it again! This author delivers every time, with every story! This action packed, nerve wracking tale had me furiously turning pages late into the night to see what happened next. Beautifully written, fast paced, thrilling, this is another masterpiece from a fabulous author!

Another well written, complex, twisted plot in this second book in the series but really how unlucky can one character's children be? Would have been 5* had Lottie' s daughters not been dragged into the plot again, following the first book this felt like unnecessary overkill.

Detective Lottie Parker takes a report about a missing woman, shortly after the body of a pregnant woman is discovered. Then another body is found….by the same man. What are the odds that a person, an innocent person, would find two dead bodies? It seems highly unlikely. The only things police know for sure is that both victims were killed in a similar fashion. When two more women disappear, Lottie is up against a wall. Feeling pressure from her superiors, the press and the public to solve the case and trying to keep her own personal life from falling into pieces, she’s beside herself. Can she hold her life together long enough to stop a killer? I liked this book a lot, because it dealt with the personal life of the main character, a cop, who has to deal with the pressures of both professional and personal life. It made Lottie a more sympathetic, believable heroine

This is Patricia Gibney’s second book and Book two in the Lottie Parker Series. The first chapter of The Stolen Girls kicks you right in the guts it’s a very hard read as an introduction to a book.

The story alternates between current day and Kosovo during the war. In Kosovo a young orphaned boy is found wandering and is taken by soldiers to the Chicken Farm. One of these soldiers is so kind to him but there are others he is unsure of.

In present day Ireland Lottie Parker and her team are dealing with the body of a young pregnant woman that has been unearthed. This on the same day that a young foreign woman and her son arrive at the home of Lottie asking for help to escape and to find their missing friend.

With no trace of the woman and her son, the body count rising , a missing local girl and bad guys coming out of the woodwork Lottie, Boyd and their team must first try and figure out who the dead girls are before they can even start trying to find out who killed them.

Lottie struggles desperately as her family are falling apart and reaching breaking point in front of her. When her beloved husbands’ memory is sullied by insinuations that he may have been taking part in illegal activities Lottie starts to push away the people closest to her.

There were times during this novel that Lottie proved to be quite selfish, overlooking her children, her Mother and Boyd as they clearly tried to get help from Lottie but in her own struggle to deal with her life and her dependency on pills she does not see what is happening in front of her eyes.

I absolutely blitzed through this book. The style of writing makes it hard for you to put down and I vowed “just one more page” at least a hundred times. Another fantastic book from Patricia.

The Stolen Girls by Patricia Gibney is a fantastic read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s due out on the 6th July (Kindle store) and you seriously do not want to miss it.

This is book 2 in the DI Lottie Parker series following on from The Missing Ones which was also an excellent book.

Lottie is unorganised and unorthodox, her personal life is a mess but somehow she gets the job done. I love the relationship and banter between her and Boyd and the other members of her team. I loved this book it was really good, I loved the storyline, the characters, everything about it really. I can’t wait for the next one in the series!

The book is very well written, has some unexpected twists and just had me gripped right from the first page. This one was so hard to put down! If I could give this book 6 stars I would, it was that good. Patricia Gibney is fast becoming one of my favourite crime fiction authors.