⚠️ TW: murder, xenophobia, rape, victim blaming, harassment, mental health ⚠️ Despite this being an easy read it just wasn't for me unfortunately. This book follows Charlie Deravin and his family whose mother, Rose, went missing 20 years ago and even though her body was never found she was believed to have been murdered. As this dark tragedy hung over the family things only got darker as people continued to throw suspicion on his father, Rhys. Now 20 years on that suspicion is still looming as strong as ever as Charlie returns to his coastal hometown in Australia whilst he is on disciplinary leave from his job with the police sex-crimes unit, and permanent leave from his marriage. And after two decades of examing the mystery of his mother, he's run out of leads. Then the skeletal remains of two people are found and the past comes crashing back. This book is an easy read, slow burner crime procedural novel that takes you on the journey of Charlie re-examing his mother's disappearance as he has to come to terms with unanswered questions and dead ends as well as new evidence and information that sends him on a rabbit hunt whilst also trying to keep his job and career intact. However, I didn't really enjoy it unfortunately for a number of reasons. Firstly, I struggled with the amount of characters because there were so many that in parts it got quite confusing. Also, I just found it to be too slow and it didn't feel like it had any big reveal moments to make it worthwhile. And finally, the main timeline of the story is set in late 2019 to early 2020 when c*vid was beginning to spread and I really hated that it was referred to as 'that Chinese virus' multiple times. Overall, this was an easy read but not for me unfortunately 🙈