After a brutal attack in the city leaves her scarred, Nikki Freeman flees to the sleepy little town of Glenwood, Florida for a chance to regroup and find peace again. Small town living brings challenges of its own and she struggles to find her place in this deep rooted community. What she doesn’t count on is discovering Glenwood has a few not-so-sunny secrets hidden in its recent history.… history.
Encouraged by her new friends and haunted by her past, Nikki delves into the mystery of a young girl who vanished seven years earlier, the night before Prom. Had she not survived her own attacker, would she have been forgotten as well? As her investigation leads to unexpected places, she’s forced to ask herself just how much she’ll risk to find a stranger.
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I loved this book and following the twist and turns init to find out who was guilty. It is well written with good character building and with a good back story build up
I received a copy of this book from an ARC group I am a member of.
The story started off at a fairly even pace, and was told for the most part through the point of view of, Nikki, a crime victim herself who has moved to a small town in Florida for a change of pace. She had found a job as a Vet Tech and during her first few days there, discovers that a girl by the name of Lauren disappeared in the town eight years before. Since she is a member of a “crime club” in Gainesville, she is curious about the unsolved disappearance of Lauren and proceeds to question people in the town about it.
The author did a fair amount of telling in this book, and I thought it would have read a bit better had there been a bit more dialogue telling the story rather than narrative. I found myself having problems with the pacing of the story after about the 1/3 mark. The story tended to have a lot of narrative that contained information that could have been edited out, some of it only served to fill the pages, or that’s the way it seemed to me when reading. The book itself could have used a good proofing, as “breaks” instead of “brakes” or double quotation marks showed up more often than I like to see.
Overall, the story was interesting, it was told in a strong point of view, regardless of whether it was Nikki or Eric that we were reading about. I wish it had been about 20% shorter, as that extra 20% had me taking a break from reading the book, then going back to it. I also found myself skimming over pages (and sadly never lost track of the story even though some pages I spent a few seconds on)
While this isn’t the type of book I usually reach for, I was pleasantly surprised by it. The writing is strong, characters interesting, and story engaging. This is a new author for me, but I look forward to reading more of her work.
Right off the bat your grabbed. Nikki is such a likeable character, who isn’t over the top. I loved how get character developed throughout the story and finding out what really happened to Lauren…
This mystery was full of surprises for me. It started with a scene that certainly grabs the attention, and sets up what I thought would be a fast-paced, suspenseful read. So, my first surprise came when things slowed down on that front. My second came when I found that the story is no less compelling for that slower pace as the author drew me in to this character driven tale. Page after page, I began to feel like I knew these people, and the more I got to know them, the more I wanted to know. I wanted to join in on the gossip, to learn their secrets, to make friends – they feel that real! My biggest surprise came with the identity of our villain. I had that part figured out rather quickly, and normally that would dim the rest of the story for me, but with Remembering Lauren, it kept me turning pages. Not only to learn the reason for this young girl’s disappearance, but to see how it would all play out, and I have to say that I definitely didn’t see the final confrontation going the way it did. In addition to a mystery that is certainly dark, gritty, and a bit sinister, we also get some sweet romance for our amateur sleuth and vet tech, Nikki. All in all, this debut novel is an excellent introduction to a promising author. It’s small town mystery at its finest and has made Misha Jordan one to watch.