My name is Kate.

I volunteer at a local charity - young people who have run away from home call me
and I pass on messages to their loved ones, no questions asked.

I don't get many phone calls, and those I do are usually short and vague, or pranks.

But this morning a girl named Sophie called.

I'm supposed to contact her parents to let them know their child is safe.

The problem is, Sophie isn't safe.

And Sophie is my daughter

This gripping,riveting thriller is split into three parts,the first part is voiced only by Kate but from part two onwards the narration alternates between Kate and Sophie.We know Sophie is still alive from the book blurb but where has she been for the last two years and how and why has she managed to contact her mother after all this time.Kate has never given up hope that one day her beloved daughter would be found or come home even if everyone else in her life including the police gave up searching for Sophie years ago.You couldn't help admiring Kate`s bravery and determination as she battled against her own demons and the constant doubts of others about her sanity throughout her desperate search for her daughter.Both Kate and Sophie where complex believable characters,the authors portrayal of their ever changing emotions felt realistic,pulled me into the story and had me routing for her characters.

This is a fast paced,riveting thriller,a gripping tale about the power of a mother's love for her child and the recklessness and naivety of a innocent teenager.It's packed with twists,red herrings and numerous suspects.Very intense and creepy at times,it had me hooked in from.start to finish.This is definitely going to be one of my favourite books of this year.

Wow - what a powerful gripping story. This book captured me from the first page and I found it hard to put down. A truly powerful display of a mothers unfaltering determination to find her missing child. Told in three parts, the first part solely from Kate's perspective I could feel the despair and the helplessness felt by Kate especially when she began to question whether others around her were correct and she was going a bit mad. Her character was so well developed and I was rooting for her throughout the book. Definitely unputdownable!

WOW! WOW! and get another WOW! I finished Where The Missing Go about 2 hours ago and I’m still saying……WOW! I was so blown away by this fictional debut by Emma Rowley that I went straight onto Amazon after I had read it to see if she had written another book yet! Which was probably a bit too enthusiastically optimistic as this one isn’t even out yet! If you enjoy psychological thrillers by writers such as Jenny Blackhurst and Clare Mackintosh then you are going to love this book. And if you’re a regular reader of my reviews then you’ll know that I have a particular passion for a certain type of twisty thriller and this one is 100% what I look for in my psychological thrillers. If you like similar books to me then I guarantee you will love this one too.

I actually started this in the very early hours one morning when I couldn’t sleep and very quickly became gripped by the storyline of a mother in pieces following the disappearance of her teenage daughter, Sophie. And by the time I had to get up, I was so addicted that I couldn’t wait to get back to bed that night to finish this fascinating storyline. I had immediately felt Kate’s devastation at the loss of her only child, refusing to give up hope, her entire life revolving around looking for clues to Sophies whereabouts. Everyone says she should move on with her life, others close to Sophie have, and accept that Sophie has gone away and doesn’t want to be found. But Kate isn’t giving up and when she takes a call at the missing person hotline she volunteers at, her worst fears seem to be realised.

Everything about this book worked for me! I loved the Cheshire setting which felt authentic with its slower pace of life compared to its big neighbour of Manchester and to London which the family had been living previously. And Cheshire born Kate was an immensely relatable character, one struggling with her own personal demons, but her maternal instincts that something wasn’t quite right about her daughters disappearance overtook those worries to show the raw emotion of a mother’s love for her child. I thought she was just so wonderfully brave, determined never to give up hope of finding Sophie even though it meant pulling away from every other relationship in her life. But most of all I loved all the red herrings floating around the periphery, never quite in the line of sight but throwing suspicious glances throughout the narrative. This book is twistier than my curls after I’ve been caught in a rainstorm and every twist was a jaw dropping, flick the pages back, “what the **** just happened there?” moment for me! Just how I like them!

Emma Rowley is a name everyone should remember as I think she is going to be HUGE! I pre-ordered my own copy of Where The Missing Go as soon as I finished it and on the strength of this debut, I would also preorder her next book without even reading the blurb-that’s how much I want to read more from this very talented writer. This is a very clever, breathtakingly brilliant read that you won’t be able to put down. Highly recommended by me!

Picking up up a new book is rather like opening a box of chocolates you never know what you are going to get until you sink your teeth it to it, sometime you are left feeling disappointed and yet other times you find the perfect combination and it leaves you wanting more, rather like Where The Missing Go. What a breathtakingly brilliant psychological thriller this one turned out to be I absolutely loved every twisted page. I feel I should mention it’s Emma Rowley’s debut novel, but what an exciting new voice in the psychological thriller genre and definitely an author to watch out for in the future

Full review will appear on my blog soon