Photo by Kieran White on Unsplash

With so many novels coming out with unreliable narrators, and other tricks and ploys to keep the savviest reader guessing, it was only a matter of time before someone thought to tell the story backwards. “All the Missing Girls,” by Megan Miranda was our pick for our January 2018 book club. The novel tells the last two weeks before the climax of the story in reverse.

I need to talk to you. That girl. I saw that girl was scribbled on a note sent to Nicolette from her father.  The note coupled with a call from her brother, Dan who informed her their dad wasn’t doing well, and the family home needed to be sold to keep up with his expenses, pushed Nicolette to grudgingly go back to Cooley Ridge.

She dreaded returning and had mostly stayed away since high school, making a life for herself in Philadelphia where she looked forward to her marriage. A sense of foreboding creeps into the story during her nine-hour drive home.

Upon her return, all sorts of subtle clues get woven into the scenes. Some, of course, are deceptive. As Nicolette and Dan clear out their childhood home, another girl goes missing.

Ten years earlier, during the county fair, Corinne, a friend of Nicolette’s went missing. Now another woman, Annaleise, has disappeared, and the same group of people are together again: Nicolette, her ex-boyfriend, Tyler and Dan.

Nicolette, Dan, and Tyler, and Corinne’s boyfriend, Jackson were all suspects in Corinne’s disappearance ten years ago.  Charges were never bought because her body was never found. The authorities thought Corinne had left town. Did she? This time Tyler was dating Annaleise. Is this a coincidence?

So far so good.  Decent set-up for a whodunit.  But, the book then starts going backwards. Can you say confusing?

Diligent readers love mysteries so that they can solve the case before the novel’s protagonist does. With unreliable narrators and clues you can’t trust it makes it almost impossible to figure out, leaving readers frustrated, probably the way real detectives feel with real life cases where everyone is an unreliable narrator. There are a few though that always seem to figure it out.

The end of the book had my book club talking. What? Really? But talking is good. We had fun with it.  Everyone agreed they liked the book, but it wasn’t anyone’s favorite.  Lots of backward motion, deceptively obscure, sometimes misleading and confusing and the ending didn’t thrill us. So, is it worth a read? Yes, it’s different and people are talking about it and that’s a good thing. Enjoy!

Rating: 7.0