Thank you so much to MacMillan Audio for the complimentary copy of the book!
Thank you so much to St Martin's Press and Minotaur Books for the complimentary copy of the book!

I was drawn to the premise of this book because hello I love me a band and I am self proclaimed fangirl. So I knew that this book would be for me.

This book is told from two timelines - the past (1986) and the present (2011). It took me a bit to get used to the timelines. Mostly because the timelines are told from two different perspectives. In the past we are in the perspective of a young Cassie and in the present timeline we are in the perspective of her older sister Nicole.

The premise doesn't really say this but I would say that when we are in the past timeline, I would say a theme of that is obsession. Cassie is only 16 years old and has this admiration for Secret Oktober specifically for the lead singer Ben Edwards. And it only progressed as she got a taste of what it was like to be near him. And a cycle of events that occurred changed the course of everyone involved lives.

In the current timeline, Nicole lives a simple life with her husband and daughter in California and all is normal until her daughter does not get off the bus. The school claims she had been picked up by her aunt in which Nicole had previously authorized. But we learn that there couldn't be an aunt that picked her daughter up. Between the disappearance of her daughter and being visited by a journalist, Nicole starts to spiral thinking back to the incidents that occured years ago.

I was pretty invested in the storyline. Because the perspectives were every other chapter or so, I would be left wanting more which kept me going with the story. I wouldn't say that there was anything jaw dropping when some of the reveals were brought to light. I'm trying to be vague without spoiling but the way Sandie wrote left things up for interpretation until you got the answer. I think for me with the last quarter of the book, things were moving so fast that I was trying to piece together everything that was happening (total me thing and no fault of the author).

Imogen Wilde was the narrator and I thought she did a pretty good job handling both perspectives. I would have loved a 2nd narrator to help distinguish the two a bit more. But I thought Imogen brought an emotional side to her tone especially when Nicole was going through the motions of not knowing where her child was. Mixed with Sandie's writing, the audio listening experience kept me on edge and I credit that to Imogen's narration.

This is my first Sandie book and I am looking forward to reading more from her!