Never Missing, Never Found by Amanda Panitch Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“It's better to be missing than dead.”- Never Missing, Never Found, Amanda Panitch

A juicy thriller about a girl who returned from the missing. . . . Hand to fans of We Were Liars, Bone Gap, and Vanishing Girls.
  
Some choices change everything. Scarlett chose to run. And the consequences will be deadly.
 
Stolen from her family as a young girl, Scarlett was lucky enough to eventually escape her captor. Now a teen, she's starting a summer job at an amusement park. There are cute boys, new friends, and the chance to finally have a normal life.Her first day on the job, Scarlett is shocked to discover that a girl from the park has gone missing. Old memories come rushing back. And now as she meets her new coworkers, one of the girls seems strangely familiar. When Scarlett chose to run all those years ago, what did she set into motion? And when push comes to shove, how far will she go to uncover the truth . . . before it's too late?

Obligatory cover critique before I can get to the actual review: Doesn't really work for me. Kind of boring. Plus, the hardback is lame. Overall, it's meh at best.

Let's start with the negatives, because, if you can't tell, that's how I roll. Firstly, Scarlett had very little personality. It's funny, but while I was reading this book, I kept noticing little things that reminded me of Panitch's first book, Damage Done, and because they worked so little in this book I'm starting to wonder if they ever worked at all. Like Scarlett's "unreliable" personality. It seems Panitch is convinced that in order to write an unreliable character, that character's personality should be all over the place. However, in practice that leads to a very muddy character (and not in a good way). I couldn't connect to her at all, and her actions were confusing as a result. What do we know for sure about Scarlett? Well, she's obsessed with superheroes (or one superhero in particular), she likes Connor, and we are informed that she is "tough and smart" though we see no real evidence of that thanks to the murky way the author (probably accidently because no one would do this on purpose) portrays her. I think because of that, I couldn't bring myself to care too much about her and about her relationship with her sister, which made up such a big part of the book.

I also felt like this book had some serious pacing issues. There were too many contemporary-seeming parts with Scarlett and the love interest. He seemed too good to be true and I didn't believe their relationship for a second. Panitch needs to either learn how to write LIs or drop them completely. There was that completely unnecessary conflict with him having a girlfriend that also didn't work for me and gave me flashbacks to The Problem with Forever. Monica, the girl who went missing, was completely thrown to the side, and I had such a hard time caring about her because not enough attention was drawn to her case. That case also felt unresolved, like the author just forgot about her altogether. But then we would get these really gripping parts with the kidnapping and the actual mystery with Katharina and Scarlett and those were great and they worked really well. I wish the entire novel had been composed of those flashbacks, honestly. I also wonder where the police are in all this. Even if Scarlett refused to talk, the cops and even the FBI would still be all over this case because missing girls don't just reappear. They'd get to the bottom of this.

I'll get to the twist after we talk about what I did like. Because, besides from the parts I mentioned above, there were a few things. I liked both Katharina and the Stepmother, who were honestly the most fleshed out characters in the book. I liked the plot idea. Besides Panitch's character development and story structure problems, the writing is technically good- gets the job done. The disturbing factor could have been amped up, but the level it was at was okay. I didn't hate this book, but it could have been so much better. And now, on to the twist! 

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

Frankly, the twist felt poorly done, cheap, and actually lessened by opinion of the twist in Damage Done (though that twist didn't feel as thrown in as this one since there were actual hints thrown in leading us to that conclusion) (plus, it was more disturbing and creepy). It felt so last minute, and was such a heel-face turn for Scarlett's character. There was nothing that lead up to it, no hints being dropped. Good thrillers don't just drop bombs on their readers. It was like someone gave me the last 50 pages of another novel. Not to mention that the reveal also caused the story structure to fall apart completely. The flashbacks, given the POV character, make absolutely no sense. The twist should have been left out entirely, for the sake of the novel. It also would have been more unique and interesting if the actual Scarlett was the main character, since she seemed to be a very well developed character and it would have also made the story a lot more unique and everything would have made a lot more sense. Also, a nitpick because I'm me: Katharina is not a Russian name. God, why do people keep confusing Russian names with German names? If it was Russian, it should be Yekaterina or Ekaterina. Hell, I would even take Katerina. (By the way, if you couldn't tell from my A Death-Struck Year review, I'm a bit of a name geek. It's one of my weirder interests).

MAJOR SPOILER SECTION OVER

I'm a bit saddened by this novel. Never has an author fallen from her throne as quickly as she has. As much as I liked Damage Done, I'm afraid Panitch has been knocked down to just mediocre. Even if this is just her sophomore novel, I feel like she's already become predictable. Still, I like her ideas, and while reading, I couldn't help but think about what a great crime novel this would have made. Imagine if someone like Tana French got her hands on this idea. This book would have been amazing. If only.

5.5 out of 10