The Mystic and the Missing Girl

[cornerofmadness]

The Mystic and the Missing Girl by Vikki VanSickle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was between 3.5 and 4 so I rounded up. I liked the idea of this but had some notes. Drew is back in her hometown after the death of her Aunt Hannah, a former TV famous psychic and mystic shop owner. Drew's realtor mother expects her to close out the shop so she can sell it for a profit and go back to her life. Drew, on the other hand, is torn. She loved her freewheeling aunt and when she was a child, she had psychic 'glimmers' that her mother highly discouraged.

It is also a major anniversary of the disappearance of a teenaged girl who had gone to the same school as Drew back in the day. Hannah had been helping the police to find the girl but things went awry with lingering bad feelings. Into this comes Nick, her former lab partner/frenemy? who is now a big city reporter trying to break into even bigger leagues with his investigative look into the cold case. He wants her help and her aunt's journals.

In spite of herself, Drew is drawn into the case which also takes her across a former boyfriend, Foster Banks, big name/small town/got money sort of deal. Their fathers work in the same law firm. Luckily, in spite of initial fears (mild spoiler) this doesn't go into love triangle territory.

I liked Nick a lot. And I mostly liked Drew but she was also the reason I was wavering on giving that last star. Drew has a few annoying habits, like she's rather rude more than a few times, notably when Foster calls her out on some of it (she is there manipulating him honestly) and she gets so mad she storms off. She has a habit of disregarding what people are telling her (Like Nick telling her to stop calling him Obi until she forces the truth out of him as to why). I was also not fond of her mother who is demanding and overbearing (though might have improved by the end) and I personally dislike amateur sleuth stories with an adversarial law enforcement officer (this also improves slightly). And oh, while I prefer it this way, the book does have a copy of swears in it which I know upsets a certain segment of the readership.

I would read the next book in the series. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for giving me an arc.





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