The Search pulls you in from the start!!! I could t stop reading until I found out what had happened to Sadie and why. Even when I though I’d guessed, I was wrong. You really felt for Luke, Mason, Abi, Cora & Fash but also didn’t trust any of them that they were telling the truth. Fleet is a detective you want to find the murderer and sort out his personal life. I can’t recommend this book more!!!!!!

I didn't like the writing style- flicking from first person to third with no clear separation. The plot was not gripping enough and I could not identify with the members of the search party.

A teenage girl has gone missing during a hot humid summer. She’s presumed dead, because the police have searched and found nothing except a hoodie with blood on it, but her body hasn’t been found.
Her friends decide to mount a search party in the woods, which is where they imagine she will have gone. This is a huge area, hundreds of thousands of acres of winding paths and thickets of trees. It’s almost impossible to know where you are, let alone find someone who doesn’t want to be discovered.
When we meet the group of friends at the beginning of the book, we know that someone in the group has died and that the search party went very wrong indeed. It’s Detective Inspector Rob Fleet’s job to find out what happened to Sadie, the missing girl, and what actually happened in the woods during the search party.
The book flicks between interviews with the group of friends. Sadie’s boyfriend Mason is the prime suspect, but no-one’s really saying anything. Interspersed with the interviews is the back story of Fleet. He’s typical detective in many ways – he’s troubled with a difficult past which has led to a broken marriage. He’s living in a state of flux and he has a superior who wants to shut down the investigation because it’s taking up too many resources. Fleet’s past is also having an impact on this case. He’s from this down-at-heel seaside town and at points his memories threaten to overwhelm him.
Fleet and his sergeant Nicki are well realised characters who seem determined to find out the truth without jumping to conclusions like the rest of the town. The teenage search party is also well-developed throughout the book as their accounts move from incoherent shock at the beginning of the novel through to a gradual reveal of what happened in the woods. Although the town is shown as being a no-hope dead-end to some extent, there’s still a sense of hope amongst some of the characters towards the end and a feeling that a brighter future awaits.

What a gripping book! A total page turner. Normally I take a good few weeks to get through a thriller, this took me only a few days - proves it was not-put-down-able! Haha. Great whodunnit premise and praise for Simon Lelic, a first read of one of his novels. I hope the character Fleet comes back!

An interesting narrative told from the perspectives of a group of 16 year old friends and the investigating officer following the disappearance of Sadie. A pact plot that kept me interested from start to finish. Thank you netgalley!

A teenager called Sadie goes missing in a small town. A group of her friends go searching for her, while the police are also searching.
Detective Inspector Fleet is involved in the search helped by Nicky – Detective Sergeant Nicola Collins. DI Fleet and DS Collins work well as a team but DI Fleet has issues with Roger Burton the Superintendent.
This was a mystery. It was about detectives, relationships, families, friendships and secrets.
I liked the way Fleet interacted with Nicky and his family. Each of the five friends of Sadie has secrets and issues between themselves and their families. Who can they trust?

This is my first read of Simon Lelic and I enjoyed the story.

Sadie has disappeared. She is a teenager from a small town. Her friends are interviewed as the storyline progresses and it seems unclear what has happened. I struggled, at the beginning, to follow the storyline as the narrative skipped from each of the friends.

All those interviewed have a secret. As the story unfolded I became more engrossed and into the outcome

DI Fleet, a complex character with many issues to deal with was a revelations and the novel promised so much but i felt lacked an intensity although that could well have been my dislike of most of the ‘search party’.

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Books UK and Simon Lelic for my ARC in return for my honest review. Recommended.

It was an interesting premise, but I had to DRN the book, it was always dragging and was too slow, at the end I've read half the book and the ending and I didn't see that coming but I feel cheated because at least half of the story makes you believe something that is later a lie.

Different, scary and clever.
Teenager Sadie goes missing and 5 of her friends go searching for her.
The question is are they real friends or not?
This was a book I didn’t want to stop reading. Several times I thought I had worked out who the suspects were, what had happened and what was going to happen only to find that I was wrong.
The writer dealt well with teenagers, their worries, jealousies and their world.
The writing right up to the ending was fantastic, gripping and unexpected.

Sadie is missing and the circumstances are shady to say the least. The police are keen for an arrest following countless hours of searching with no result and Sadie's gang of friends are also keen to find her.
However, each character seems to have a hidden motivation for the search they undertake and the consequences of the search are horrifying.
In the aftermath each reveals some truths and some part truths to the police in the course of their interviews and things become ever harder to follow and untangle with plenty of motives, some opportunities and a lot of confusion.
A great premise for a story with a blinder of an ending, my only issue was that the interviews and the real time action were not always clearly separated in the text and it made it confusing in places as to who was talking and where they were both in time and place. I am a lover of clear chapters or page breaks and I don't think it would detract from the pace to split things out a bit!

Sadie, a small town teenager has disappeared, the police haven't found her alive or otherwise. The chief wants an arrest to save face and they have the perfect person to pin it on. All the dots seem to add up perfectly. Except they don't.

A group of friends set out to find what happened to their friend. They don't know if they will find her alive or dead, but they have to do something right? One by one accusations come out. 5 teenagers, hungry, thirsty, alone in the woods, each one sees something or hears something in the shadows. When all tensions are high, tragedy strikes.

These teenagers were found after said tragedy and are taken into interview to find out what happened, how and why, and what about Sadie?

The book is filled with these interviews, the stories, the lies, the backstabbing that happens in a teenage life all come to the surface and in the end, will we finally get to know what happened to Sadie?

I really enjoyed the read, once The Search officially comes out, I will be recommending it to my book club.

I thought it was very well written and kept me mostly engaged. And the twists were...well, kept me guessing and I almost always predict the who did what to whom, not this time! When you think you know, you don't.

I was annoyed with one thing and it actually had me putting the book down a few times. The writing is good, the pace is good. It was when going from interview reenactment to the here and now. There was no pause, no separation. A few times I had to reread a paragraph to find out where I was up to. One sentence was the teens doing something then the next the detective doing something else. It really annoyed me and to be honest, almost made me stop reading, especially the first time. I didn't even realise they were in interview I was just confused what was going on.

A good story with a nice twist towards the end, I certainly didn't see it coming! Did get confusing at times as to who was talking.

Loved this book - would 100% recommend and am looking forward to reading what this author writes next!

I usually like books from multiple perspectives but this one felt a bit messy. The characters didn't have clear enough voices for me so one blended into another and I didn't care enough who got in trouble. I found the trope of 'big boss wants results right now even if they're wrong' a bit too cliched. It wasn't very believable. But the forest scenes were good - quite Blair-Witch-y.

I enjoyed this book. It's a gripping story, and cleverly-written n the way that we hear several different viewpoints from different characters. I didn't feel the voices of the young people were very different, but perhaps that was deliberate. A great read, and a really unexpected ending.

ixteen-year-old Sadie Saunders is missing, last seen six days ago, and no stone is being left unturned in the attempt to find her. The local community thinks that she’s dead, and they’ve decided just who’s to blame – her troubled boyfriend, Mason.

Sadie’s clique of friends, including Mason, think that the search is focussing in the wrong area, so set out to find her themselves. They know the local area in a way that the adults never could, and they know Sadie better than anyone. For Mason, it’s doubly important that he finds her, not only because he loves her, but to prove that he’s not a killer.

When the police are informed of the unofficial search party, it adds to their problems: they need to find the missing teenager, dead or alive, and now they need to find the group of five who’ve gone after her. When one of the kids turns up dead, Sadie still missing, an increasingly hostile community, and with pressure from above to solve these cases quickly – even if it means putting an innocent child in prison – the police are left to untangle a web of half-truths and lies.

The Search Party is a taut thriller which ably depicts the restriction of childhood in small town England. Most of the characters are well developed, and nobody is above suspicion. Sadie’s small group of friends contain common teen tropes – the princess, the mother’s boy, the mean girl, the bad boy, etc – but it’s not done in a clumsy fashion, and the tropes don’t detract from the story. Neither does the secondary narrative, regarding the lead police officer’s return to the hometown that he abandoned at the age of 17 after a family tragedy which has haunted him ever since.

Lelic leads the reader down more than a few blind alleys before the end, and the denouement provides all the answers needed. A satisfying read.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Really enjoyed this book! Was gripped from the beginning, lots of twists and enjoyed the way it was told from lots of different characters perspective, would 100% recommend

I really enjoyed this easy but interesting crime thriller. The author perfectly capture the speech patterns of teenagers - not always easy to read, but it's how they speak! As usual we have a world weary police officer who solves the case., but he is interesting and multi-layered. A good book with a really interesting unusual plot.

This atmospheric writing of this book will have you feeling as though you are the sixth member of the search party.
You will feel the tension and menace of being entwined in the friendship group.
A nail biting, baited breath, edge of the seat kind of tale

Perfect YA fiction, reminiscent of the point horror books I used to read as a teenager.

Told from different characters points of view to build a bigger picture until you work out the full story. The Search Party is an engaging book.