This is a book I’ve had on my kindle forever and a day! Always meaning to get to it. Finally having the time to “bust my backlist” and resurrect this fabulous mystery/suspense for anyone who hasn’t read this ……yet. You MUST.

I think I shelved this when there were far too many “children gone missing” books out in one year and I thought, oh not another one.
BUT this is much more than that. I can’t emphasise more strongly than this is not just your ‘child is missing, taken, snatched, abducted’ plot.

It’s got a bigger depth.

Domestic thriller? Yes! Definitely.
Shocking? Yes!

Definitely something to get your brain cog wheels dusted.

Unfortunately I struggled a bit with this book, I can’t put my finger on the reason but for me this book was lacking in something.

What a fantastic debut! I loved the characters, and the story was really interesting. I will definitely be looking out for more books by this author.

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

Really enjoyable read, although at times it got a bit confusing as there was two stories running concurrently. That said, it all made sense and came together well.

99 Red Balloons by Elisabeth Carpenter is a well written and impressive debut novel in the psychological fiction genre.

Talk about a heartbreaking read. I absolutely found myself tearing up as I read this story. I also thought I had figured out what had happened to Grace, but turns out I was completely wrong. Such a great way to tell the story - flashing back, but not really seeming to be flashing back. Loved this book!

This has been on my kindle for ages. It had a similar synopsis to so many other books I’ve read and I wasn’t that eager to read another missing child story. However once I started it I was pulled in by the characters and the parallel story lines - Grace who is missing now, and Zoe who went missing over 30 years ago. It wasn’t the most gripping novel - I wouldn’t class it as a psychological thriller - but a good read none the less.
I am rating this as a 4 star read.
A really good debut novel and I will definitely read more from this author.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

I will admit I was expecting a bit more from this one, but it was a solid mysterious read. I enjoyed how the chapter alternated between a bunch of characters and still seemed to flow. Maybe I am judging it a bit harsher than normal since I have been reading a lot of psychological thrillers that have blown me away recently. I will say I will absolutely be reading the next book by this author, since there is just so much potential here. I wish it wasn’t as slow paced from the middle on, because the beginning pace was excellent.

Character wise, I feel like there could definitely have been more development. I didn’t feel a real connection with any of them, but I did feel like they had pretty good secrets hidden. If I had to pick one character as a favorite it would have to be Steph, she was the most down to earth in my opinion.

If you are just getting into the psychological thriller genre, this would be a pretty solid place to start, but if you are big on this genre, I would pass it up. The book had so much potential and just fell really flat. As I said before, I may be rating this one a bit too harshly.

I received an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley. This book had me from the very beginning. I love that it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I would highly recommend this book to my fellow readers. Thank you for the chance to review this book!!!!

What a scary harrowing read! Not in the Stephen King side of it, but in the underlying idea that anybody can at anytime lose their child. What a very scary thought. The book was well written and worth the effort. Highly recommended!!

I really enjoyed this book, it is one of those that grabs the readers attention from page one and although it is a difficult subject, the abduction of a young girl, it kept my attention to the very last word. It is really well written and I found myself going through the raft of feelings along with the mother, grandmother and extended family and I was kept guessing to the very end where the twist was that last surprise that made it an exciting book to read.

Really enjoyed this crime thriller. Great cast of characters and a gripping and entertaining plot with enough twists and surprises to keep this reader guessing. I Couldn't put it down.

I read this is one sitting. Utterly gripping. . I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Thank you.

I loved this booked it was so sad and chilling it had me hooked from the first page till the last there a so many twist in this book its like being on a rollercoaster ride i loved it that much i brought the paperback copy for my daughter to reax

There are so many books similar to this around at the moment but this is one of the better ones.

I received a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. This boom be fan like your average missing child mystery. Grace goes missing and her parents are devastated. They spend all their time and effort trying to find her. At the same time, the chapters alternate with an unknown character who is a kidnapped girl. As the book progresses, you learn more about the family dynamics and history as well as about the backstory on the kidnapped little girl. This book was full of twists and turns that kept me guessing!

99 Red Balloons by Elisabeth Carpenter is a psychological thriller/mystery.

This is Carpenter’s debut novel, and I am looking forward to reading more from this very talented author.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Avon Books UK, and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When 8-year old Grace goes missing on her way home from the candy store, her family is thrown into a tailspin. Trying to support each other, they each deal with the loss in their own way. 

There are a lot of secrets in this family.  Is Grace’s mother Emma having an affair?  Is Grace’s father Matt so guiltless?  Then there is Emma’s mother who may be hiding the biggest secret of all.  Grace’s Aunt Stephanie seems innocent, but is she?  Do any of these secrets play a part in Grace’s abduction?  The only thing we can be sure of is that they all love Grace, and want her back safe and sound.

When the newspaper reports the story, another woman is reminded of a similar loss many years ago.  Maggie has lost her husband, and her son, and her daughter.  But  Maggie has never stopped hoping that her missing grandchild Zoe will come back into her life, and when she sees a picture of Grace’s family and reads this familiar tale, she becomes obsessed.

This is the story of every parent’s worst nightmare.  A missing child.  It is also a story about family, blood or not.

Carpenter tells most of the tale from the perspectives of Stephanie and Maggie, but occasionally from a few other characters which are not so clearly defined. This keeps you guessing, and adds even more suspense and dimensions to the book. While you would think this may add confusion, it actually reads very smoothly, getting the story across very well. Carpenter is a talented writer. There were a few twists, but there was a major one near the end that really surprised me – not that easy to do. I loved it!

Enthralling novel, can’t wait for more from this author!

This review is written with thanks to Avon Books and Netgalley for my copy of 99 Red Balloons.
When eight year old Grace Harper is abducted by a stranger who offers her sweets, her mum, Emma, and Aunt Stephanie are understandably distraught. As the police investigation into Grace's abduction escalates, Maggie is reminded of the abduction of her granddaughter, Zoe, thirty years previously. What happened to Zoe and Grace?
99 Red Balloons is written in chapters narrated mostly by Stephanie and Maggie; however, there are also chapters from the perspective of various anonymous narrators interspersed between them. This helped me to gain insight into the characters' lives, especially as there are several secrets within the family. I particularly enjoyed the chapters from the child's point of view, as this added a slightly different dynamic to the novel, as I began to piece together what had happened. However, I found that at times, it was not always clear who was narrating the anonymous chapters and this interrupted the flow of the novel for me. The different chapters did help to build tension as the two strands of the novel developed, but I felt that they often over complicated the plot. As each chapter was fairly short, it was difficult to get to know each character in depth, and this prevented me from making an emotional connection with them.
The plot of 99 Red Balloons is well constructed, and this means the novel is full of tension. I wanted to know where Grace was, and what had happened to Zoe all those years ago. However, the "twist" in the plot is hinted at quite early on in the novel, and this removed the element of surprise for me.
Prior to reading, I'd heard lots about 99 Red Balloons. Whilst I enjoyed some elements of it, I felt that it didn't quite live up to its billing.

Right off the bat, the characters. Oh. My. Gosh. I resented them all. The only one that was nice was Jim, the only one I didn’t mind reading about. It also didn’t help at all that none of the characters ever had their own voice. Which is frustrating as hell because every chapter is from someone else’s perspective, and the only person you can distinctly pick out from the pages is Maggie. This was really maddening. Like really, really frustrating. Not liking any of the characters didn’t help at all, because I couldn’t give a damn about their situation, the present, the past, nothing, and this book is all about that.

I was also not a fan of the writing – it was really stinted and didn’t flow nicely. The story gets told, but it comes across as erratic, and the plot twist that comes along later is not delivered super smoothly at all, it is something you sort of wonder about, especially with the plot device that the author is deliberately trying to shove down your throat, so insistently that eventually you are wondering if she would be so bold as to be so honest.

I did not appreciate the chapter division – like the perspective from a multitude of characters. This style can work for some books, but it didn’t really work here, and I think that is primarily because the characters all ran into each other, there were no major differences between them, and it was hard to keep track of who was who as they all sounded the same. Also, all the characters being equally messed up, selfish and overall meh contributed toward this. 99 Red Balloons also felt like it was going around and around in circles, not really going anywhere – it felt like an awfully long read. I feel it could have been a lot shorter than it ultimately was.

Anyway, I don’t think I need to state the obvious that I wasn’t bowled over by this. Seems a lot of people liked it, but it just didn’t work for me. Not the worst book I read this year, but it was really generic for me at the end of the day. I would say skip, but that is just me.