Five years ago, two 11-year-old girls, Lucia and Ana, disappear on their way home from school. Now, 16-year-old Ana has been discovered as the sole survivor of a deadly car crash, and Detectives Sara Campos and Santiago Bain have arrived to try to find Lucia. Set in the very small, very insular mountainside town of Monteperdido, while some villagers want to find Lucia, others just want to keep their secrets buried.
This is not an American or British-style thriller, so keep that in mind while reading. The Village of Lost Girls was written by a Spanish author and translated, and, like other books from Spain I’ve read before, the language is much more descriptive, much more flowery, and the plots are slower building. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of.
I liked the plot of this story. I think the relationship between the parents of the missing girls was interesting, especially since they were also next door neighbors and Ana’s father was a suspect. I liked the imagery of the white deer, although I wish that had carried through more of the book.
One thing that slowed down my reading was the number of characters in this book. So many different characters, with so many different relationships criss-crossing, it was just hard to keep track and bogged down the reading. In this way, it definitely read more like a piece of literary fiction than a thriller, but since I really like literary fiction, it worked for me.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and Quercus Books in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.