What I’m Reading: The Missing Half

I used to be a big fan of the podcast Crime Junkies. I have since not listened to podcasts as much as I previously did. The true crime genre gets to be a little too much after a while. Arnie always says to me that to be happy we need to keep negativity out our lives…and I’m finding that’s a can be true.

While I was still listening to podcasts, I put myself on the waitlist for the book The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers and Alex Kiester. Well, Ashly Flowers is the head person at the podcast Crime Junkies that I previously listened to. The book became available, and I thought, what the heck, I’ll listen to it. It’s been on my list so long, I might as well.

I was partway into the book and actually liking it. Then my daughter Kelli told me she had read the book and she thought the book was overrated…At the time I thought that was a little harsh. I was enjoying the book. I loved the main character and felt terrible for her. She had lost her sister…or at least she thought she had as she was listed as missing. She had no idea what happened to her. Was she dead, was she alive? Her parents were no help, and the girl was spiraling. Who couldn’t feel for her? The story had me going, and I thought Kelli truly was a little harsh.

By the end of the book…I understood.

Here’s what Amazon had to say:

Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. At twenty-four, she lives alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana, she’s just gotten a DWI, and she works the same dead-end job she’s been working since high school, a job she only has because her boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace.

On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver’s door was open and her purse was untouched in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold.

Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

Amazon readers gave it 4.2 stars. I’m going with 4. In the end, I couldn’t sympathize with any of the characters. I lost that loving feeling for the book pretty quickly. I find when I read a book, I need to relate to a character or sympathize with them. I just couldn’t.

If you are interested in the book, you can find it HERE.