Recently released on March 5, Missing Clarissa is perfect for your next read! I’m not sure what got me interested in Missing Clarissa—whether it was the general description, the podcast element, or I just felt like taking a chance. Thrillers aren’t normally my genre of choice. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by Ripley Jones’s debut novel. It was darker than I expected yet also has plenty of light character moments.

 The book follows Clarissa Campbell when she suddenly disappears in 1999 with no explanation, and hasn’t been seen since. Police never figured out what happened to her, and the town of Oreville, Washington hasn’t been the same since her disappearance. Since then, she has turned into a bit of an urban legend.

Twenty years later, high school juniors Blair and Cameron decide to take on her disappearance for a high school journalism project: a true crime podcast. Determined to find out what happened to Clarissa, they start investigating her disappearance. Their investigation uncovers a slew of small town secrets. And there’s one that just might put them in danger…

     All in all, the mystery was the best part of this book. While the clues to what happened to Clarissa are pretty in your face, if you’re not paying attention, you might miss it. The pace of the book definitely picks up towards the end, as things snowball pretty quickly when Blair and Cam think they’re onto something. As mysteries usually do.

This book is pitched as a podcast book, but I wish that the podcast sections read more like a podcast transcript. Since podcasts are generally conversations between people, that would have made them read more like podcasts than monologues. However, you still get important information in them, and you get to see some interesting characters throughout.

The point of view of the book also threw me off a bit. Blair and Cam did have distinctive voices, but the third person made it difficult to gauge who’s mind we were in at certain times. Maybe more obvious chapters throughout would have helped.

If you’re a fan of fast-paced, true crime mysteries, you’ll definitely want to pick this up!