ARC Book Review | Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

Format: e-ARC
Source: Publisher via Edelweiss
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 10, 2015
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver delivers a gripping story about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident.

Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.

In this edgy and compelling novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters search to find themselves, and each other.

"Alarming and uplifting, a rare psychological thriller that has a kind heart at its center. Read it with all the lights on." --E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars

My Thoughts:

As a fan of Oliver’s Before I Fall and Delirium books, I was expecting that I would fall in love with the characters and the story of Vanishing Girls like I did the other books.  However, that wasn’t the case. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book.  The characters were interesting and I loved how Oliver incorporated media coverage of the disappearances in the story.  But around 60% in, I developed a theory, and unfortunately that theory was right. This is one thing I hate when it comes to thrillers and/or mysteries, if I have most of the MAIN twist figured out, it takes a lot of shock and awe away from the plot and the big reveal, which in turn lowers my enjoyment of the book. 

I feel like if I hadn’t had most things figured out a little over halfway through, I probably would have LOVED this book.  That’s not to say that it was easy to figure out, but there were reasons I believe I was able to figure it out so soon, but I won’t say in fear of spoiling something for someone else. 

As for the characters, I felt that it was incredibly easy to sympathize with Nick, you could just feel the guilt radiating off of her and you can also feel her pain and the yearning to make everything right with her sister.  I didn’t really feel a strong connection with any of the secondary characters, probably because Nick has such a hard time letting people in, and because of that I don’t think we got to know a lot of them.  But that’s okay because I feel like this book was more focused on Nick and Dara and that was perfectly fine with me.

Overall, Vanishing Girls is a book that I would recommend to anyone looking for a thriller or a little bit of mystery.