Member Reviews
I really enjoyed this - it kept me engaged and guessing, though the end slightly let me down. It just felt rushed in some ways and everyone sort of just accepted everything too easily but it wasn't entirely unbelievable.
Overall, much better than Five Survive so I'm looking forward to Jackson's next one.
This brilliant YA thriller follows Bel and her family being filmed for a new Netflix true-crime documentary all about her mother’s disappearance 16 years ago. This story is full of lies, angst, twists and turns. I’m sure by the title, you can guess a little part of what happens, but believe me that is only the beginning of the eerie madness that ensues.
Bel is a terrifically ballsy main character with an acid tongue and nerves of steel while maintaining a vulnerability that is so life like that I was truly rooting for her, especially with the little romance sideline.
I honestly raced through this book and the last 25% is nothing short of explosive. I was so addicted and could not wait to find out the truth of the situation. The whole book carries a sinister tension that builds and builds until you have no idea who you can trust.
I can’t wait to check out Holly Jackson’s backlist titles because I loved this one so much! Many thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
I sped through this one – the story was gripping and I found myself changing my mind regularly as new information was revealed.
Bel was a well developed main character and I liked her a lot – even if she was sometimes carried away by impulsive actions when she would have been better taking a calmer approach – after all who reacts rationally to everything at 18? Her life had been shaped at an early age by the disappearance of her mother Rachel in peculiar circumstances – circumstances which Bel herself had been part of although she was too young to remember. Despite being raised by her father who she had a strong relationship with and her extended family who live nearby her early experiences still had a daily impact on Bel – her mothers case was a conspiracy theorists favorite, she has a fear of people leaving and so apart from her father tries desperately to keep people at arms length – even her cousin Carter whom she adores.
When mid-way through filming a documentary about her mother’s disappearance the mother in question suddenly re-appears after 16 years missing Bel’s ordered world is thrown in to turmoil. No one reacts in the way she expected them to, Rachel feels like an intruder in Bel’s home and most of all Bel is not convinced Rachel is telling the truth about what happened to her. Desperate for answers Bel ropes in a member of the documentary crew and they launch their own investigation.
I won’t say much more about the plot because I don’t want to give away spoilers but this book certainly kept me guessing. I’m not sure the ending 100% worked for me, not how things ended up but the choices that people made to get there, some of them didn’t feel like the most ‘real’ option. Overall though I really enjoyed this one.
I was pleasantly surprised at how much i enjoyed this. After the ending of Five Survive which required the reader to suspend belief and felt more fitting to a US teen drama i wasn't sure how i'd fair with this but it was very good. I liked the documentary set up at the beginning and found Bel a very engaging and relateable character. Her behaviour throughout the story made sense which is something i've struggled with in Jacksons other books. The twists and turns in the story felt well set up and executed well as well as being genuniely surprising. I really enjoyed the ending and look forward to reading Jacksons next book.
The Reappearance of Rachel Price is an unputdownable, pacey read with a mystery that will keep you guessing throughout. I devoured this.
Bel Price has just started to take part in a documentary with her family about the disappearance of her mother 16 years before. Despite being just a toddler when her mum vanished, the fact that Bel was with her in her final moments, makes her centre of the story. As a huge event shakes not only the documentary but Bel and her entire family, a few inconsistencies begin to be noticed. Bel, along with one of the film crew, begins to take the investigation in her own direction, discovering layers upon layers of deception. There was one part where I wanted the story to go in a different direction than it did but that is just me!
After loving A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, I could not wait to read this and I was not disappointed. A great mystery story.
Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.
I am a HUGE fan of Holly Jackson and her writing style so when I got approved for an ARC I screamed. Holly is mostly known for her trilogy A Good Girl's Guide to Murder but has written other books including Five Survive. I have always been a big lover of Crime/Murder Mysteries although I'm a big scaredy cat. Holly creates worlds which seem like they could be real life cases. The Reappearence of Rachel Price was an absolute cracker of a book. I found myself hooked from the first page and needing to jump into the book myself and solve the mystery. There was also the aspect of the documentary which reminded me of AGGGTM but stood on it's own two feet aswell. I HIGHLY recommend this book and will be buying a physical copy (or several)
THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE is a twisty tale of a convenient reappearance and family secrets.
The set up and premise is so good, a documentary about a disappearance testing a family emotionally only for it to all be even more emotionally charged when the missing mother turns up. It seems too good to be true... And is it?
It's such a good hook, and I kept reading and reading to find out the truth of what had really happened - both at the disappearance and the reappearance. It's two intertwined mysteries that feed into one another so there is always some new clue or dead end to find.
The situation then brings out in the family tension, arguments springing up over this delightful web of secrets and arguments, all done under the camera's eye. They are so messy but pretending to be perfect.
At the same time there's something so invasive and exploitative about the documentary prying into their lives, even if Bel starts using it for her own purposes. I have never really got into true crime for this reason (it made mee feel a bit odd) and I liked that this book did ask those questions about the genre, what it might be like for the family to have it all dragged up again for other people's entertainment.