BOOK REVIEW: THE MISSING BY MELANIE FLORENCE

The Missing by Melanie Florence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in an exchange for an honest review

Feather lives in Winnipeg, where there is a high amount of Aboriginal girls who go missing or are killed, and their cases are not investigated. Some of Feather's friends, Mia and Carli, go down to the rec centre some nights when they need to escape their home lives for a while. They get a bed at the rec centre, or stay by the riverbank where the other homeless sleep. When Carli goes missing, Feather and Mia know that something bad must have happened to her. However, nobody is willing to investigate, because she is deemed a "habitual runaway" because she goes to the rec centre sometimes. When she is found dead, it is ruled a suicide despite there being marks showing some sort of struggle. When Feather's best friend Mia goes missing at the same place Carli did, she knows she HAS to find the killer, or nobody else will.

There are a lot of serious subjects tackled in the book, such as the disappearance of Native girls being ignored by the police, anti-gay sentiments, child abuse, and victim blaming. It ties into many real cases where such disappearances are ignored or mishandled.

The story started off extremely interesting and I didn't want to put it down, but I'd say around 40% of the way through I felt the story went flat. I figured out way early who the killer was which made the book boring to me.

All in all it was an ok book… fast read….



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