DS Karen Hart still has not solved the case of missing Amy Fisher, but that case moves to the back burner when two girls disappear from their school. Still reeling from the knowledge that she has been unable to find Fisher, Hart puts all her energies into investing the seemingly close-knit village. Are the residents there hiding something? Butler does a good job building her characters and setting, all in all, a satisfying British police procedural

Bring Them Home follows Karen, a detective, as she tries to track down the culprit of the missing two 10 year old girls, Emily and Sian, and 19 year Amy in a relatively quiet town.

This was definitely a Criminal Minds, piece-all-the-characters-together kinda vibe. As the story went along we were introduced to more and more suspects, where the reader is left to try and guess who did what.

One suspect family stays at the center light throughout the whole story. The Palmer family is an interestingly dark, and mysterious family that Karen is quite literally obsessed with.

One of the things I really enjoyed in this novel were all the little side stories we got about the main characters and their lives at home. It helped me understand why the detectives always reacted as they did, and why they looked at evidence the way they did. I thought that Butler did a good job making all the main characters three dimensional.

The plot itself was subpar. It wasn’t bad or boring, don’t get me wrong, it was just your typical mystery novel. Although it was fun trying to piece the mystery together, there was nothing shocking or anything that differentiates it from other mystery plots of missing children.

The writing was of a good pace. It was very easy to follow along with what was going on, and I didn’t find myself skimming through paragraphs like I often do when authors incorporate too many useless details (which is usually my biggest turn off in writing style, so i love an author who avoids this).

I think my biggest pet peeve of this story was definitely the repetition, specifically when we were in Karen’s POV. A detail such as “Emily would never go into the farm, we could rule that out.” Would be repeated about three or times within only a few paragraphs.

But nitpicking aside here is the final verdict: this was a good book. Nothing too out of the ordinary, nothing too “oh please god no, make it stop”. I would recommend it for people who love a classic mystery.

I so adored this book! It has brilliant main characters, an excellent plot and it kept me engrossed all the way through. I would highly recommend this book.