I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I had never heard of The Van Apfel Girls are Gone before it was offered to me for review, and I was intrigued by the premise. As an avid listener of true crime podcasts, I fully expected to enjoy this thriller about a woman who’s life was changed when her friends, the three Van Apfel sisters, disappear one summer. However, this book was more literary fiction than thriller, and the mystery behind the disappearance left me completely unsatisfied.

I’ve been sitting on this review for a long time because, well, I just don't feel like I have a lot to say. I haven’t read the three comp titles included in the blurb, so I don’t think I knew what to expect. I was hoping for a twisting, intriguing mystery and a look at how the Van Apfel girls’s disappearances have impacted Tikka’s life 30 years later, but we just didn’t get that. In fact, this book isn’t really about the Van Apfel girls at all -- this book is a snapshot of Tikka’s adult life with flashbacks to her childhood. I just didn’t find any of this interesting, as Tikka is drifting through life and she felt like a pointless character. For me, the disappearance of her friends just didn't seem to have an impact on her life at all, which was so strange because that's what the book is meant to be about.

Being a few months removed from reading this book, I just don’t think any of the characters or the plot are memorable. The writing is lovely and it was pretty compulsively readable, but I just didn’t really see the point of this story. I’d say that this is perhaps this is because I’m not much of a literary fiction reader, but some of my favourite books are indeed literary fiction.

I think I’m mostly just puzzled. This book was clearly not for me.