Scan barcode
A review by ravensandpages
How to Find a Missing Girl by Victoria Wlosok
1.5
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and Little Brown.
When I read that a book is for fans of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and Veronica Mars, I expect it to be a new and original story with echoes of a familiar story, not a series I already love condensed into one book with gay packaging...
HOW TO FIND A MISSING GIRL was a disappointing read that follows Iris Blackthorn, an amateur detective who got her start when her sister Stella went missing a year ago. Unfortunately, her meddling ended up scaring off the only lead, and the police declared a sister a runaway before telling Iris to either back off or face jail time. Now she and her two friends run an under-the-table detective agency doing odd jobs like finding proof that Iris' ex-girlfriend Heather is being cheated on by school golden boy Nathan Devareaux, whose family has their small town in Louisiana in a choke hold; if you're not working for them, the only other viable career option is dealing drugs.
But right after they hand the proof off, Heather disappears just like Stella did, right after dropping a new episode of her true crime podcast about Stella. But Iris is up against a ticking clock to find her; after she turns 18, any interference will land her in prison, and she only has a month to uncover the truth about what happened to Heather.
This book was... not good. My praise for it centers almost solely around Sammy and Imani, who were pretty much the only characters that made the story bearable. I did like the queer rep (the funky earrings were so fun and accurate) and it's strangely nice to be getting old enough to read a book that feels like it's truly set in my time. I also did like the attention paid to Iris' grief about her sister disappearing and there were some moments that genuinely tugged at my heartstrings, especially with her dynamic with her aunt. However, the writing and pacing fell flat and had a lot of unnecessary repetition that Iris' random moments of quotable clarity could not save. The first half was a death crawl and the second half was hospital-worthy whiplash (said negatively), and to be entirely honest: Iris was a very irritating main character to be in the headspace of, and it made a very unenjoyable read.
To detail my complaints about her: she is far better at lying to and using the people around her than any detective work, which is pretty much the only explanation for her running an agency instead of going solo despite having zero talent for leadership or teamwork. So much of this book relied on coincidences and foolishness rather than actual detecting, to the point where the reveals were either too predictable or just out of nowhere. I found it truly hard to believe that Iris would have failed to draw the connections between Stella and Heather, and furthermore, the USB drives being the lynchpin pieces of evidence for the case got so infuriating. Their fixation on the recovery keys instead of stopping to think for two seconds about the password being something Iris would have had to know made everything that went into finding them mind-numbing to read. Which, of course, ended up being most of the book. While I get that teen detectives obviously aren't going to be Holmes or Poirot, I expect at least a slightly higher level of deduction if they're going to spend that much time waxing poetic about how it's what they're meant to do. The idea of her running out of time at 18 was also a bit laughable considering that it felt like the head detective made it really obvious she would be being tried as an adult if she got caught regardless, but that's just another thing on the list.
Beyond that, the book was also just a mash-up of every conceivable high school amateur detective story out there that did not put a unique enough twist on them to have something I could enjoy. And listen, as a very gay reader, I do love the draw of something I already love with queerness thrown in the mix! There's just a difference between adding tropes you already like to a new story you've crafted and being so close to one of your comp titles that my eyes start narrowing. Between the cold case missing sibling, and the podcast, and the room trashing, and the police interference, and the rich kid protected by their family, and the "my calling is hurting the people I love" breakdown, and the unsupportive parental figure, and the teachers... it just made me want to put this down and reread AGGGTM, but I had the audiobook accompanying me on a terrifying late-night drive in rural Missouri backroads and I wasn't about to risk my life turning it off, and that's what really got me through.
I personally would not recommend this to fans of AGGGTM, as I think it would be a letdown.
When I read that a book is for fans of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and Veronica Mars, I expect it to be a new and original story with echoes of a familiar story, not a series I already love condensed into one book with gay packaging...
HOW TO FIND A MISSING GIRL was a disappointing read that follows Iris Blackthorn, an amateur detective who got her start when her sister Stella went missing a year ago. Unfortunately, her meddling ended up scaring off the only lead, and the police declared a sister a runaway before telling Iris to either back off or face jail time. Now she and her two friends run an under-the-table detective agency doing odd jobs like finding proof that Iris' ex-girlfriend Heather is being cheated on by school golden boy Nathan Devareaux, whose family has their small town in Louisiana in a choke hold; if you're not working for them, the only other viable career option is dealing drugs.
But right after they hand the proof off, Heather disappears just like Stella did, right after dropping a new episode of her true crime podcast about Stella. But Iris is up against a ticking clock to find her; after she turns 18, any interference will land her in prison, and she only has a month to uncover the truth about what happened to Heather.
This book was... not good. My praise for it centers almost solely around Sammy and Imani, who were pretty much the only characters that made the story bearable. I did like the queer rep (the funky earrings were so fun and accurate) and it's strangely nice to be getting old enough to read a book that feels like it's truly set in my time. I also did like the attention paid to Iris' grief about her sister disappearing and there were some moments that genuinely tugged at my heartstrings, especially with her dynamic with her aunt. However, the writing and pacing fell flat and had a lot of unnecessary repetition that Iris' random moments of quotable clarity could not save. The first half was a death crawl and the second half was hospital-worthy whiplash (said negatively), and to be entirely honest: Iris was a very irritating main character to be in the headspace of, and it made a very unenjoyable read.
To detail my complaints about her: she is far better at lying to and using the people around her than any detective work, which is pretty much the only explanation for her running an agency instead of going solo despite having zero talent for leadership or teamwork. So much of this book relied on coincidences and foolishness rather than actual detecting, to the point where the reveals were either too predictable or just out of nowhere. I found it truly hard to believe that Iris would have failed to draw the connections between Stella and Heather, and furthermore, the USB drives being the lynchpin pieces of evidence for the case got so infuriating. Their fixation on the recovery keys instead of stopping to think for two seconds about the password being something Iris would have had to know made everything that went into finding them mind-numbing to read. Which, of course, ended up being most of the book. While I get that teen detectives obviously aren't going to be Holmes or Poirot, I expect at least a slightly higher level of deduction if they're going to spend that much time waxing poetic about how it's what they're meant to do. The idea of her running out of time at 18 was also a bit laughable considering that it felt like the head detective made it really obvious she would be being tried as an adult if she got caught regardless, but that's just another thing on the list.
Beyond that, the book was also just a mash-up of every conceivable high school amateur detective story out there that did not put a unique enough twist on them to have something I could enjoy. And listen, as a very gay reader, I do love the draw of something I already love with queerness thrown in the mix! There's just a difference between adding tropes you already like to a new story you've crafted and being so close to one of your comp titles that my eyes start narrowing. Between the cold case missing sibling, and the podcast, and the room trashing, and the police interference, and the rich kid protected by their family, and the "my calling is hurting the people I love" breakdown, and the unsupportive parental figure, and the teachers... it just made me want to put this down and reread AGGGTM, but I had the audiobook accompanying me on a terrifying late-night drive in rural Missouri backroads and I wasn't about to risk my life turning it off, and that's what really got me through.
I personally would not recommend this to fans of AGGGTM, as I think it would be a letdown.