Young adult chicklit with a crime twist

In the small town of Kelly's Falls three teenage girls - Emma, Olivia and Skyler - have gone missing during the Christmas break. There seem to be no leads and the FBI decides to call Shea O'Connor, a 23 year old Buffalo police officer, to go undercover. Her job is to find out more about the lifes of the three college freshman and to find out what happened to them.

The synopsis makes this book sound like a nail-biting, spine-chilling mystery crime thriller. I was a bit confused when the book itself read more like a young adult chicklit.

Shea goes undercover as an 18 year old college student. She befriends the girls who were friends of the missing girls and tries to find out as much as she can about the lifes of Emma, Olivia and Skyler. Shea is investigating the crime, but she is also going to parties, she's gossiping, shes getting into trouble with other girls and she's falling in love with the brother of one of the missing girls.. The story is more about the drama of being the new girl in a small town than it is about the missing girls.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I wasn't axpecting it, but if you like a YA novel with a crime-twist, this might be a story you will really enjoy reading.

But there was a part of the book that really annoyed me. Shea is only 23 years old. She has been through some bad stuff at work, but she is still very young. She constantly looks at the 18 year old girls she is talking to as much younger. Almost as if they are children. Almost as if she is much older and wiser than they are. She is just 5 years older than them..

Also I thought the plot was pretty predictable and a bit far-fetched.
"I hadn't expected this. Who the hell would?"
Well.. I did. Maybe I've read too many thrillers, maybe I expected something entirely different, maybe this just wasn't a book for me.

2,5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for sending me an e-ARC.