Missing White Woman

The flow of the story line was good but the ending was a bit underwhelming.

Okay, so the main character was quite annoying to me because she was so caught up in the mentality of being a failure and not worthy and great things, due to serving some time in the past. I will say that having a boyfriend that disappeared put the character out of her comfort zone and allowed for her to see herself as courageous, deserving, and loved. I did not like how the social media influencer was in the crime. I like my books to be escapes from social realities.

Maybe because this is not the first book, I've read by this author, or because I read a lot of mystery books, and cozy mystery books, but I found this book to be along the lines of cozy mystery rather than a thriller suspense book. Some of the things I'd like about this book was getting a perspective of a African-American woman in a unfamiliar neighborhood that is predominantly, white and upper middle class and her take on being the topic of the neighborhood particularly when a community member Janelle goes missing. It has our main character on edge as she's going to visit her boyfriend and they're having a romantic get together while he's working in the city. I think the premise has a nice set up and intriguing to all types of readers, and because the pacing of the book is fairly steady and has an easiness about it until things really pick up. It's one of the reasons why I consider this cozy, mellow, mystery book. Also, since I am an African-American woman myself, I can understand a lot of the internal thoughts, speculations, and fears that our main character, Breanna, feels especially with beginning of the book, worrying about implications regarding her involvement/connection to the body that turns up in the Airbnb. It does seem like from that point on Breanna turned into the standard amateur sleuth because she has to get involved in this case to clear her name and figure out what's happened to her boyfriend Ty as well. Another thing that I liked about this book and the premise is the way it incorporates the mass spread of News and information via social media, and how that really holds the power to influence society and the collective thought. Reading the missing, white woman made me think a lot about the lifetime movies my mother used to watch, and the breadcrumbs strung throughout the book, leading to multiple people that are in this community that Breanna is just visiting and how it ultimately falls on her shoulders to do what the police aren't doing which is really investigating the case(s) instead of trying to make her or her boyfriend liable for the whole mess. Parts of the book that gave me pause, really centered on the fact that, besides going back-and-forth from giving the reader information about Breanna's past and her friendship, I found a difficult to feel a connection and empathy for what was happening between her and Ty; it just didn't seem like their relationship was That deep and I know that their relationship while longer than her others was still pretty short. Overall, I think this is an intriguing mystery, book for readers, who like crime, podcasts, and missing people, cold case conspiracies and insider information will enjoy this book. And as a caveat, I found that a lot of the narrative and how Breanna's story is relayed as information to the reader is told in a way to inform and educate readers/an audience of non-African-American decent whom are not familiar with the oppressive, suspicion, racially motivated and emotionally charged scrutiny that minorities face within society, social media, in life and with the law. As I can relate and emphasize with Breanna's perspective being Black in a different state all on her own in a house( an airbnb no less) where this crime has been committed and her boyfriend is missing, and she's becomes connected to other situations that happened in the book (that are spoiler related) the pressure would not be on her as much as it is if she had less melanin. This is a personal opinion of course. I