The Village - Caroline Mitchell

Reading Challenge Category: Free ARC from NetGalley

Official Blurb:

Ten years ago, the Harper family disappeared. Their deserted cottage was left with the water running, the television playing cartoons, the oven ready for baking. The doors were locked from the inside.
Overnight, the sleepy village of Nighbrook became notorious as the scene of the unsolved mystery of the decade, an epicentre for ghoulish media speculation.
For crime journalist Naomi, solving the case has turned into an obsession. So now, with Ivy Cottage finally listed for sale, it’s her chance to mount an investigation like no other. And her husband and stepdaughter don’t really need to know what happened in their new home… do they?
But Nighbrook isn’t quite the village she expected. No one wants to talk to her. No one will answer her questions. And as she becomes increasingly uneasy, it’s clear that the villagers are hiding something—that there is something very dark at the heart of this rural idyll. And the deeper she digs, the more it seems her investigation could be more dangerous than she ever imagined… In raking up the secrets of the past, has she made her own family the next target?

My Thoughts:

This is one creepy read.
I had no idea where this story was going to go when I started it, but I enjoyed the journey it took me on. Naomi is an extremely strong character, which made a pleasant change from the weak female protagonists that often appear in these books.
The book is interspersed with events from the past; these are mainly from Grace, the missing young girl’s perspective. They left you wanting more as nothing was made clear about what was actually wrong with Grace, but as the story progresses, her maladies get worse and worse.
The present-day chapters follow both Naomi and her stepdaughter Morgan. These chapters move at a slightly slower pace, and you feel yourself rushing through them to get some answers to what is going on.
The ending is quite complicated, and I don’t feel like we get all fleshed out answers to everything but just enough to satisfy the reader that they haven’t wasted their time reading this book. I think I would have liked to ensconce myself a little more in the why’s and how’s before jumping to Naomi’s conclusion.
Overall, it was a good read, and I did get through it at a good pace, but I just felt like something was missing from it, which I can’t quite put my finger on. Still, a good four-star read, though.