Frankie Elkin isn't your typical woman she has taken it upon herself to find the missing. She has had some luck in finding the missing but unfortunately most of them have been deceased but she just wants to give closure to the families. Her next missing person is a young girl Angelique who just disappeared one day from school. Can she gain the trust of her family to help or will her being white be a problem?
The more Frankie digs into the missing girl's life the more she finds out about the bad elements that surround the children daily. With the help Detective Lotham she will find out the truth she just hopes that she finds Angelique alive?
Will Frankie ever be able to settle in one place or will her guilt about her past keep her moving endlessly? A good read.
I was lucky enough to receive a copy via Netgalley & the publishing house in exchange for my honest review.

I like reading Lisa Gardner’s books and this one is no exception. She draws you in from the first chapter and you are hooked. The characters are well described and believable and the plot is well researched and unfolds at a perfect pace. My only slight criticism is that Frankie’s thoughts of what had happened and what might happen was a little repetitive but I guess it did keep consolidating the story for any reader who had failed to remember all the nuances. I look forward to reading more by this talented author.

I love this author and yet again this book did not disappoint. This time we follow Frankie as she moves from town to town trying to find out what happened to the missing when the police give up. Although putting herself and her sobriety in danger she works tirelessly to find the answers and bring some peace to the family. This time she is hunting down a missing girl in the hope of reuniting or at least bring some peace to a family who need answers and a brother who is convinced his sister did not just run away. With a town set against her Frankie has her work cut out for her and is putting herself in danger as she refuses to give up until she finds the girl. Great story and a really interesting and flawed character I really like her.

Frankie is a woman driven by shame and guilt. She desperately wants to make something right, something that happened ten years ago. That’s why she moves around the country searching for missing persons. This time the missing girl is Angelique, now 16 years old, gone missing eleven month ago.
I liked the story, the pace and the deep insight in the mind of a desperate woman and the many hours of work dedicated to bring someone home - dead or alive.

As an avid reader, what I love most is finding a new author that I've not come across before.
Before She Disappeared is my first time delving into this authors work and I'm excited...
Thrilled in fact to discover she has many more books written for me to follow up.
In this story we are introduced to Frankie Elkin.
I found Frankie to be almost like a Mary Poppins type character. Stay until the wind changes or in this case stay until she finds the missing person and then move on.
Frankie has dedicated her life to working on missing person cases.
She travels the country light but with a multitude of baggage if you could believe it.
Light in terms of possessions...but she carries with her a multitude of inner demons, doing an almost daily battle with them.
The disappearance of a young fifteen year old girl Angelique Badeau brings Frankie to Boston. To a neighbourhood where she should not go out at night and if she does, she is watching over both shoulders...
While working in a bar with accommodation upstairs, Frankie now has a base and sets about getting to know the locals and the young missing girls family and friends.
She settles in quite quickly and gets to working on the case in her private capacity albeit along side the rather reluctant Detective Lotham assigned to the case.
She is stepping on toes but she knows she's not here to make friends.
So can they solve the disappearance of this young girl together.
Can they bring some comfort to her distraught family or is Frankie putting herself in danger just by poking her nose around and even being involved with them.
A very slow burning read I felt but worth your time and effort.
Frankie I did feel is a character you either like or you don't...
She is rough around the edges but her heart is in the right place..
A standalone too and not part of a series...

Although set in the Boston stomping grounds of Gardner's recurring characters DD Warren and Flora Dane, Before She Disappeared is a standalone thriller which follows Frankie Elkin, a middle aged woman driven to seek out, and try to solve, missing persons cases. As a thriller it is trademark Gardner: at times heart-poundingly tense with superb character development and more twists than a roller coaster. And with the cases Elkin takes on being restricted to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) women, the book has some interesting things to say about White Saviourism and how police resources in modern America are used (or not used). For me, it didn't go quite far enough in critiquing both, but I appreciated the attempt.

What a great read. I enjoyed every page and can’t recommend this book enough. I liked Frankie and wanted her to beat her demons and find Angelique. It's a rollercoaster journey with some hold-your-breath moments along the way, but so worth it

Lisa Gardner always delivers. This is so different from any of her other stand alone thrillers and it is so compulsive. I loved Frankie and her many flaws. She is an alcoholic and it seemed so realistic, her recovery, her fragility, her need to make amends. Her story of travelling around, tracing missing people, find them albeit dead is so real. I could read more of this, especially with a side-kick of Lotham and a dose of Piper and Stoney. The story is complex, the characters are well-rounded, Frankie is a lone, intelligent white woman who is trying to keep herself going through hard graft and AA meetings with a purpose of finding these lost souls. A thriller with heart and soul.

Every different read from Lisa Gardener. A very unique and unusual thriller featuring a middle aged woman who hunts for missing people. She is dogged ,determined and uncaring of her own safety but she gets results.

This is a book that is easy to get into and hard to put down.
The lead character is likeable and determined to solve missing cold cases, despite having made some poor decisions in the past. You see everything through her eyes and get to understand her thought processes as she talks to the families involved.
The book is well written and flows well, indeed it is easy to think you will read just a little more until you realise it is now the early hours. I recommend this engaging book.
Thanks to Netgalley for an arc for my honest review.

I am a huge Lisa Gardner fan and have read all her books, series and standalone thrillers. This one certainly didn’t disappoint. It kept me hooked from the beginning and I couldn’t wait to find out how it would end. Very enjoyable read

I've been a Lisa Gardner fan for years though this has mostly been her Detective D.D. Warren series so I was excited to read something a little different from her. Before She Disappeared didn't disappoint and I thoroughly enjoyed this stand alone novel (or what I think is a stand alone, although it definitely could turn into a series). Before She Disappeared has everything a top tier thriller needs with an edge-of-your-seat writing style dropping near constant clues to decipher what has happened to Angelique Badeau. This is incredibly gripping and very clever through the absolute spot on portrayal of today's young people, the crystal clear imagery of Boston and the interesting insights into gangs, crime and how new technology is being utilised illegally. This was a page-turner and in terms of the characters - Angelique, her brother, Stoney, Livia to name a few - very strong; there are a lot of characters in this and for once I found I was able to keep track of them all and form emotional responses to their personalities. This didn't quite make 5 stars for me because however good it was, I do not think it will be unforgettable (I've already read some very solid reads in 2021 so maybe I am judging too harshly). Additionally I just didn't warm to Frankie Elgin, and therefore found her backstory a little lacklustre, wanting to skip ahead to the missing person parts instead. I'd still happily recommend to Gardner and crime thriller fans alike.

*I received an advance review copy of Before She Disappeared from the publisher via NetGalley.

Before She Disappeared focuses on an investigator, Frankie, who focuses on missing person cases, trying to track down people who have gone missing free of charge. Frankie arrives in Mattapan, Boston, where teenager Angelique lived with her aunt and brother, before she went missing 11 months ago.

Author Lisa Gardner has written an atmospheric story which kept me wanting to read on. The characters are interesting, although I struggled to really connect with Frankie until quite far into the novel. She is, overall, a likable character though and she is really trying to atone for her past. She feels well developed as a character as the novel continues.

I didn’t find myself hugely addicted to the plot but I did find it intriguing and enjoyable.

The plot is complex enough without being too complicated, and the story builds up the tension nicely. I enjoyed this atmospheric read and, although it seems Lisa Gardner hasn’t released a standalone novel for a long time before this one, I really enjoyed this book – it makes me want to read more by her, and try some of her other, very well known, series.

A really enjoyable mystery thriller!

In America there's a group of people who's main goal is to find missing people. They are not trained professionals but amateurs who look into cold cases because like the author says sometimes you just need the right person to ask the right questions at the right time.
This is the premise of this book. They don't do it for money or fame but to try and unite loved ones.

The main character is as flawed as you can get. A recovering alcoholic who is being chased by ghosts from her past.  She likes to get into peoples faces and is not scared to ask tough questions. She has set her mind on finding a girl from Mattapan in Boston who disappeared eleven months before. Will she finally be able to find someone alive and will she be able to lay her demons to rest?

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

This was so good, the writing was like you was there following the clues as Frankie got them to find the missing girls. Best book of the year so far, I enjoyed every bit of it.

A fast paced thriller which is cleverly written and entertaining to read. I skipped through it in a couple of days, very keen to find out how it would end.
Frankie Elkin is a recovering alcoholic and a loner. She moves from place to place searching for missing persons on whom the police have all but given up.
She arrives in Boston in order to find Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who has been missing for almost a year. Angelique disappeared after school one day and never made it home to her aunt and brother who live in a poor part of the city.
Frankie has her own secrets and regrets- the book is written in the first person and gradually her story is revealed as she searches desperately for Angelique, hoping against hope that she will be the first of her 14 missing person cases to be found alive.
I really liked Frankie as a character- she hides a lot of herself from other people, not keen to give too much away and consequently she does not make friends easily, yet she’s great at asking the right questions and putting herself in the shoes of the missing. She is desperate to find Angelique, it’s almost as if she is searching for her to atone for her own perceived guilt for something that has happened in her own past.
Guilt and atonement seem to be a major part of this book. However hard Frankie tries she cannot escape from her own past.
It seems to me that this novel could be the first in a new series featuring Frankie Elkin and I would definitely be keen to read another to see how she progresses as a character.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the drifting mystery solving character of Frankie- seemingly rootless and purposeless but with a real talent for finding the tiny clues that solve old disappearances and finally provide answers to families.
The disappearance of a teen from her high school attracts her attention and she ingratiates herself with the family and police and begins the process of untangling all the previously unseen hints, clues and strange occurences that ultimately tease out the truth. Frankie consistently sees things or reaches conclusions that the police either did not see or dismissed as unimportant and she leads them to the resolution of the case in an unassuming way that belies her talent.

What a fabulous story that kept me guessing right to the end. Fiction Book of the last 12 months for me, rated against the 70+ that I have read. It is only when you get to read something outstanding like Before She Disappeared that the other books that you have read lose a bit of their lustre.

A totally original piece of fiction that is tied to the fact that there are amateur "missing person" groups out there. I loved it and I believe you will too.

A salutary read given how many people go missing every year without trace. I always used to enjoy Without A Trace. Started really well but then went rather slow and my attention wavered and wandered. Overlong too.
If you see it in the bookcase at a hotel and you need something to read by the pool you could do worse

Thanks to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book. It resonated with me from the very first page... but before I say anything else here's a little more about the book.
Before I even opened a page, I was drawn to this book for many reasons. Firstly, I've
been waiting for a new Lisa Gardner book for what seems like an eternity, so no way was I going to miss the chance of reading this. Then, there's the subject matter - the idea of someone close to me going missing without trace sends shivers down my spine and the fact that there are so many missing people out there is chilling. However, until I read the acknowledgments of this book I was unaware of just how many ordinary people dedicate their lives to bringing resolution to the families of the missing by investigating what happened to them. Before She Disappeared is a tribute to all of those selfless people who do just that. It is also an extremely well-written, well- researched story which gets to the heart and emotions of the subject.
Frankie Elkin fascinated me. What would drive a woman to live a nomadic lifestyle, moving with her belongings in her back pack from one missing persons investigation to another? Frankie's demons follow her wherever she goes and it is this dynamic that makes her so interesting. Unlike the police Frankie is able to get under the victims' families' reserves. She is tenacious, dedicated and completely fearless. Yet, there lurks a vulnerability about her that makes you want to find out more about her. I found it refreshing to see a main character who is a middle-aged woman too.

Taking us into the heart of the Haitian community near Boston and with sensitivity and honesty Gardner delivers a narrative that brings the community and neighborhood to life - from the food, to the problems with immigration, to police attitudes and friendships.

The search for Angelique Badeau, the missing girl, is nuanced with detail, emotion, realism and is also balanced and thoughtful. With action , threats and prejudice to contend with Frankie will no be diverted from her path to find the girl and work out why she went missing.

I hope we haven't seen the last of Frankie Elkin, because I for one am a committed fan.

Before She Disappeared is my favourite read of 2021, so far and it will take a whopper of a read to shift it from that position.