The Disappearing by Lori Roy #bookreview #suspense

Title: The Disappearing

Author:  Lori Roy

Publisher: Dutton

Publication Date: July 17, 2018

Page Count: 352

My rating: 2 stars

About the book:

Two-time Edgar Award-winning author Lori Roy spins a twisted, atmospheric tale about a small Southern town where girls disappear and boys run away.

When Lane Fielding fled her isolated Florida hometown after high school for the anonymity of New York City, she swore she’d never return. But twenty years later, newly divorced and with two daughters in tow, she finds herself tending bar at the local dive and living with her parents on the historic Fielding Plantation. Here, the past haunts her and the sinister crimes of her father–the former director of an infamous boys’ school–make her as unwelcome in town as she was the day she left.

Ostracized by the people she was taught to trust, Lane’s unsteady truce with the town is rattled when her older daughter suddenly vanishes. Ten days earlier, a college student went missing, and the two disappearances at first ignite fears that a serial killer who once preyed upon the town has returned. But when Lane’s younger daughter admits to having made a new and unseemly friend, a desperate Lane attacks her hometown’s façade to discover whether her daughter’s disappearance is payback for her father’s crimes–or for her own.

With reporters descending upon the town, police combing through the swamp, and events taking increasingly disturbing turns, Lane fears she faces too many enemies and too little time to bring her daughter safely home. Powerful and heart-pounding, The Disappearing questions the endurance of family bonds, the dangers of dark rumors and small town gossip, and how sometimes home is the scariest place of all.

Well…. the one thing going through my mind when finishing The Disappearing by Lori Roy? Three strikes and your out! Why do you ask? Because unfortunately for me this is the third supposed to be thrilling book in a row that just didn’t do much for me.

The story centers around Lane Fielding who after twenty years away has returned to her hometown after getting a divorce. Moving back with her two daughters to the family home isn’t exactly where Lane has wanted to end up since she’s not really welcomed in the small town due to things her father had done.

Just as Lane returns she finds that a young college student has gone missing and the fear that Lane had growing up returns. Twenty years before the town had been haunted by  a serial killer and now as a parent Lane worries about her girls the way she had once been the one that her parents had worried about.

Ok, so serial killings in the past… abducted victim in the present… sign me up, right? Wrong. The biggest part of the problem for me with getting invested into The Disappearing was the book moved along slow as molasses. Having just read two others that seemed to crawl along it was certainly not what I needed at all. But sealing the deal with my rating on this one was the fact that I didn’t get that wonderful beginning that drew me in and I just never really cared for the characters at all. I’m sure there are those out there that like a slow build and would love this one but it definitely wasn’t my cup of tea.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

Lori Roy is the author of Bent Road, winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel; Until She Comes Home, finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; and Let Me Die in His Footsteps, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her family.