When I first saw the cover for Missing Molly I wasn’t overly interested in the book as it’s fairly generic and doesn’t really capture your imagination. The blurb, however, really grabbed my attention and I had to read it.
Rachel Holloway works for a small struggling newspaper, the South Hackney Herald, and to try to generate some much needed interest and advertising dollars the team decide to embark upon a new venture – podcasting. Piggybacking off the idea of Serial, an extraordinarily popular investigative podcast, the Herald team decide to focus on a nearby unsolved true crime story.
They’re going to find Molly Forster, whose parents and older sister were murdered fifteen year ago when she was a child. Molly has been missing ever since. The problem is that Rachel Holloway is Molly Forster and there’s a good reason why she doesn’t want to be found.
While I was definitely interested in knowing what came next and I enjoyed the slow reveal of the information discovered during the investigation and its impact on the various characters, I don’t imagine it’s going to be one of those books that lingers in my mind, with me thinking about the characters weeks later. I didn’t particularly love or hate any of the characters and unfortunately I didn’t emotionally connect to any of them.
I was entertained and I liked the guessing game of whether Rachel really was Molly or if in fact she was psychotic, although I found myself searching for red herrings that I never found and didn’t get caught up in unexpected twists and turns like I’d hoped. There was one incident that initially surprised me but one I’d read it it made perfect sense and I was able to come up with the reasons behind this and who had done what quite easily.
Favourite quote:
“Memories, unpleasant ones, are like a scab. You hate them but you pick at them anyway”
Content warnings include sexual assault and domestic violence.
Thank you so much to NetGalley, The Last Bureau and Pikko’s House for the opportunity to read this book.
Once Upon a Blurb
Everyone has secrets, and Rachel Holloway is no exception. She’s worked hard to keep the past where it belongs: dead and buried. And so far, she’s been very successful.
But now the small newspaper where she works wants to produce a podcast on a cold case: the disappearance twelve years ago of little Molly Forster.
Some secrets should never see the light of day, and as far as Rachel is concerned, whatever happened to little Molly is one of them. Rachel has a life now, a boyfriend she loves and a three-year-old daughter she adores, and she will do anything to protect them.
But to do that, no one can ever know that she is Molly Forster.
Schizanthus Nerd 