Review: The Missing by C.L. Taylor

Title: The Missing

Author: C.L. Taylor

Published: November 2017, William Morrow Paperbacks

Format: ARC Paperback, 496 pages

Source: Publisher

A harrowing
psychological thriller about a missing teenage boy whose mother must
expose the secrets within their own family if she wants to find her
son—perfect for fans of Reconstructing Amelia.

You love your family. They make you feel safe. You trust them. Or do you…?

When
fifteen-year-old Billy Wilkinson goes missing in the middle of the
night, his mother, Claire Wilkinson, blames herself. She’s not the only
one. There isn’t a single member of Billy’s family that doesn’t feel
guilty. But the Wilkinsons are so used to keeping secrets from one
another that it isn’t until six months later, after an appeal for
information goes horribly wrong, that the truth begins to surface.

Claire is sure of two things—that Billy is still alive and that her friends and family had nothing to do with his disappearance.

A mother’s instinct is never wrong. Or is it…?

Combining an unreliable narrator and fast-paced storytelling, The Missing is a chilling novel of psychological suspense that will thoroughly captivate and obsess readers.

My thoughts: This is the first book I’ve read by C.L. Taylor and I can definitely tell you – it will not be the last! I was captivated from the first page and despite the fact that this book is quite the chunkster, coming in at almost 500 pages, I flew through it…it has you frantically flipping the pages, desperate to get to the bottom of what really happened.

I think what I loved most about this book is that it constantly kept me on my toes. I felt as  though there was always something new being uncovered that would cause me to change the way I was thinking about what really happened to young Billy Wilkinson and that made the book all the more engaging. I didn’t know who I could trust and I loved that there were so many secrets that just kept coming out. This book is just chock full of them!

The characters in this book are so vivid and real – they are all flawed and deeply affected by what has happened to Billy and are struggling in their own ways. Their pain and grief is palpable. Claire, Billy’s mother, and the main narrator of the story, is at times unreliable and this makes you question her, especially when she starts having amnesiac episodes. They are quite frightening, but is it trauma that is causing it or just the stress of her son being missing? 

I thought I had figured things out a few times, only to be completely gobsmacked when it was finally revealed what had actually happened. I would never in a million years guessed that ending…and I loved that! That to me is why I love and continue to read these types of books – they keep me thinking all the way through…they challenge me and keep me on my toes. And now I definitely have to pick up more of C.L. Taylor’s books, especially if they are anything like this one!