Vanishing Girls

Vanishing Girls
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Borrow
 Source: Copy courtesy of Bookbridgr

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.

GoodReads synopsis instead of my own, cos I wanted to keep this as spoiler free as possible! And we all know I suck at spoiler free synopsis! 

So, I've not read Lauren Oliver books before, but they're always majorly hyped so when this came up for review, I decided to go for it. I have mixed feelings about the book to be honest! 

The writing was very compelling and very engrossing, I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen next, to get answers about where Madeline was, what Dara's deal was and what she'd been up to and everything and I was speeding through it to get said answers. 

I had a problem with the twist/reveal. To be honest, as soon as it hit a certain part towards the end of the book, I started to suspect what was going on, or something similar, so when the big reveal came, I wasn't all that surprised and I was a bit disappointed as I've read a similar twist in other books before. What disappointed me most however, was that when you look back over all the pages you've just read, knowing what you then knew about Dara and Nick....I felt it didn't hold up and that the whole book ended up not really making sense. I mean some of the conversations and some of the things that happened, don't make sense when you know what's really been going on. The kissing scene with Parker for instance, the dinner scene on Dara's birthday, I just felt like it doesn't really make sense and it doesn't hold up to a close inspection. 

Knowing that Oliver's books are so well hyped and everything, I was a bit disappointed by this, and I felt like the ending twist was thrown in without much thought. There needed to be some tidying up and things needed to be related better, and generally sorted out so everything fully makes sense. 

I liked Nick, I actually felt for her and connected to her, I didn't particularly like Dara, I thought she was a bit of a cow to be honest, and she annoyed me the majority of the time. Yeah I could see her point of view and everything but still. She just annoyed me as a character. However, liking Nick, I felt quite sad that her sister was no longer talking to her and she just wanted to reconnect and everything. 

While the writing was beautiful, there seemed to be a lack of emotion, I felt emotionally detached from the book and the events, I was intrigued, but it was hard to get emotionally involved in the book, there was a bit of a cold air to it as well. I'm assuming this was to show the girls relationship coming across, but it made it hard to get involved properly with the book. 

Overall, intriguing, well written, but overall, a bit of a disappointment towards the end, and a few things that needed to be cleared up to make sense all together, that sort of thing. I'm quite sad about this to be honest because I was expecting big things from the author!