Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for my copy.

Claire organizes a reunion of her old school friend to help her father who has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. Her parents are struggling to maintain their farm and her mother wants to sell it. Unfortunately this is the home that her 13 year old daughter lived when she disappeared 20 years ago.

There is a whole cast of characters here and several of them are unlikeable and downright horrible. Claire's husband Callum is a total jerk and thoroughly contemptible.

Maggie, Claire's best friend. Ugh this women just needed a good shaking. She is selfish and negligent as a mother. Her daughter Rain is a precocious entitled spoiled brat.

The author does a great job in balancing these characters though as I still cared about what happened especially to the two females. For me as a reader I want characters that I dislike but am still moved by them emotionally. Apart from Callum that is, I really didn't give a damn what happened to the entitled prig.

There is some red herrings along the way and the ending was good but I still felt there were questions unanswered. Overall though a very enjoyable and interesting read.

This was a quick and dirty, suspenseful read. And I mean that in the absolute best way possible. I read this in two sittings - foregoing sleep in order to just find out how it all ends!

The book starts with Claire allowing her 13 year old sister Eleanor to wander off and buy an ice cream. Eleanor never returns.

Fast-forward 21 years. In an attempt to help her ailing father, Claire organizes a week long reunion at their home; bringing back close friends and her brother, everyone who was there when Eleanor disappeared.

Told through alternating voices: Claire, Jason, Callum, Nick, Maggie, Rain, and Eleanor - we join them on the rollercoaster of emotions as some of them re-live what happened all those years ago ... only to have something similar happen again.

Well written, well paced (I think Nick's side-story wasn't necessary ... but that's being pretty picky), this is a good, suspenseful read. I didn't expect what happened - some things I thought I had guessed, but Samantha Hayes did a good job of ending with a bang - and not just to have a bang, but because it tied everything together PERFECTLY.

Recommended read if you enjoy mysteries and want to read one that doesn't feel obvious. If you enjoyed I Let You Go - then I think you'll enjoy this one too.

A brilliant book. Extremely well written. Claire is organising a reunion of her school friends, friends she had when her sister went missing. Now many years later her dad is starting to lose his mind and her mum wants to sell the family farm. When her friends arrive things don't go to plan and another young girl goes missing. A terrific read. Thoroughly enjoyable.. Hard to put down.

Enough secrets and twists to keep the pages turning at a rapid pace. Plenty of issues that kept the plot modern and the book bang up-to-date. Great cast of characters for the reader to empathise with or dislike in equal measure. It did not take long to get absorbed in this book and I could not put it down until I read the last page.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What the hell !!
What the wonderfully engaging hell this was.
I had a suspicion about the kidnapper but the reasons and the story as it unfolded, it was way beyond thought. It's like an understanding dawned on me and yet it is troubling. It is so so twisted , this story and it is so full of a very well crafted setting and plot. Totally enjoyed this.

WOW! This is just my type of book. Plenty of mystery, suspense, friends keeping secrets from the past, and a twist you don't see coming. Loved it!

A well written, absorbing thriller, tackling the highly emotive topic that seems to be 'flavour of the month' amongst both authors and TV script writers at the minute, child abduction. To my mind this excellent read stands amongst the best in this vein, with all its subtle twists of plot, totally believable characters and depth of storyline. Well worth reading.

The Reunion by Samantha Hayes was a bit of a slow burning thriller read. The beginning of the story takes readers back to 1996 when teenage Claire was in charge of watching her younger sister Lenni at the beach. Lenni had begged to be able to go for ice cream and never returned.

After the initial introduction to what had happened in the past the story jumps to present time where the point of view will begin switching between characters. In the present Claire’s father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and she gets the idea that it would be good to get all the old crowd together before he gets worse and the family has to sell their property.

The first half of the book is when the story is slowly being built while introducing all of the key characters. As readers learn who is who it becomes apparent that there are secrets and lies among the group and before the readers knows it the intensity ramps up with things taking a horrible turn in the present.

Once getting to the second half of this story events begin happening that truly make this what one would call a gripping read. As the pages turn assumptions will be made but with one twist after another the layers of the outcome get revealed leaving off with one of those jaw dropping moments and making a great read for the thriller fans out there.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

So The Reunion by Samantha Hayes, what a ride this was.
This is one of those books that once you start there's no getting off and I loved this tale so much.
So the Reunion tells the story of thirteen year old Lenni going missing, the year is 1996 and Claire allows her little sister to go off and buy ice-cream alone.
If you think that's a bit old to be supervised, Lenny herself is described as special, so I think she obviously has some degree of learning difficulties.
Lenny vanishes and despite a police investigation, there's not a trace of her to be found.
So fast forward a few years, 2017 to be precise and Claire is now married with two children and living next door to her parents.
A successful realtor married to a neurosurgeon her life is going well,
On account of her fathers, Altzheimer's Claire decides to have a reunion of the old gang who saw her dad as a father figure growing up.
This is where it gets fun, and I can reveal without it being a spoiler that Lenny is alive.
This book is told from a lot of peoples POV one of them being Lenny.
In fact, this is the reason I removed half a star, I thought there was maybe too many voices and I would have been satisfied with just Claire and Lenny, I believe that was actually overkill.
sometimes less is more.
But that's only a small issue and the rest of this experience was fantastic.
I was kept guessing throughout and while some individuals I loved others were too horrible for words.
The husband Callum for one, how could you be married for so many years and not realise what someone's true heart is, well there are no words for his sort of behaviour, horrid individual.
And also the friend's daughter Rain think her name was, I have teenagers and thank god none of mine are as awful and precocious as her.
Couldn't stand her.
The reunion will get the cogs in your brain moving and it threw so many red herrings around I thought I was fishing.
It kept me guessing throughout. and I can honestly say I was shocked when the outcome was finally revealed.
So this was excellently written and my only criticisms was the point I mentioned earlier about too many voices and also I would have liked to have seen a certain someone brought to task for there actions.
So I felt this lacked that all-important ingredient closure.
Over than that this was a win-win for me that I am happy to recommend.
This was an exciting seat of your pants read that I highly recommend.
I was provided with an ARC of "The Reunion" By Netgalley of which I have reviewed voluntary.
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Despite the rules, Claire let Eleanor walk to the ice cream shop from the beach where Claire, their brother Jason & a couple of their closest friends were all hanging out and having a great time. The problem was, Eleanor never came back.
Fast forward to when they are all adults with families of their own. Their dad has alzheimers and it is getting harder and harder for their mom to manage the upkeep of their big farm and take care of him as well. Claire decides to have a reunion with all those that were there the day her little sister went missing. What should be a fun week turns into a nightmare of epic proportions as someone else goes missing, truths are revealed, and everyone is left in shock. This book is full of twists and turns that will delight even the most hardcore fans of suspense. This is definitely one you want to add to your must-read list.

Okay. I have to get this out of the way. The family in this story (at least by the central character's maiden name) are the Lucas family. I have no affiliation with or knowledge of the author and this has come as much as a surprise to me as other readers. Especially as she has an Aunt Jenny. Threw me for a while I must admit. Right with that out of the way, on to the book.

This is a very cleverly plotted thriller, layered with tension which spans a couple of decades. When our central character Claire is with her friends down at the beach, it goes against everything that she has ever promised her parents to allow her younger sister Lenni go and buy an ice cream on her own. And yet something makes her give in to Lenni, perhaps the lure of her friends in the sea. As she watches her sister head off across the beach, she has no way of knowing this will be the last time any of them sees her. Riddled with guilt, Lenni's disappearance derails all of Claire;s plans for university and changes the course of her whole life.

Cut forward twenty years and with her father ill with the onset of Alzheimer's, Claire decides to organise one last party, a reunion of the close friends and family who made up her world in the days before Lenni disappeared, her plan to bring some happy memories back to her father's deteriorating mind. She has no idea of the chain of events that she is about to set in motion by bringing them all back to her childhood home, or the revelations which are set to rock the foundation of her world.

Now this is not your in your face kind of thriller. There is a very slow and gradual build of tension, an understandable air of sadness which affects Claire and her family which permeates the narrative. But there are also those little tells, the small happenings which start to set the hairs rising on your arms. The silent phone calls, the mystery message full of menace left of Claire's answer phone and a symbol etched into the dirt on the rear of her car. No outright threats, but enough to know that someone of something is bringing the past back to haunt the future. When something happens which threatens the happiness of the friends you can feel that dread building, the wonder if history could be repeating itself, especially as readers have a certain amount of information which, while not certainty, add an element of suspicion to events.

The structure of the story is very good, taking the reader back between current events and passages which are clearly from the past, but how far into the past it is hard to tell. It does tell the reader more about what happened to Lenni, but not the who or why, and that bit of additional knowledge makes it difficult to tell fact from fiction when it comes to the present day. it is clear that many of them are nursing secrets, any of them could be made suspects in the disappearance of Lenni and even Rain, the teenage daughter of Maggie, Claire's best friend from childhood. But as for who stands to gain from either disappearance and why. Well, those particular revelations do not come until near the end and are as shocking as they are unexpected. Whilst I perhaps had the merest inkling of one element, subtle clues dropped throughout the book, I was not expecting the second revelation. The lengths some people will go to to cover a lie. Makes the skin crawl.

Nothing in the book is gratuitous or graphic and the tension is more like the slow tightening of a belt around your waist than a fast punch to your gut and yet something in this book just works. The quality of the story, the writing, the way in which the characters were built, just worked for me. I didn't like them all, certainly one or two I'd have liked to give a good punch to the gut to myself. I perhaps would have liked to have seen more made of Maggie after her daughter disappeared but the story was centered firmly around Claire. As you read through, you'll understand why. Maybe more could have been made of the threatening and silent calls, to kick the tension up a notch. But quite honestly, from page one, despite this the book had me racing through, the action and the mystery driving me on to find out what had really happened. To see if there was any possible way this could ever result in a happy ending.

A really effective slow building psychological thriller which will absolutely please fans of the genre.

I just knew at the beginning this was going to be one I wouldn't be able to put down. A little girl goes missing from the beach and can't be found. Years later during a reunion of friends who were at that beach something happens.
The case of the missing girl gets reopened. Now read the book to find out what happend.....you just won't believe it!!! Rightly deserves five stars!!!

Twenty years after her younger sister Lenni disappeared, Claire organizes a reunion of her oldest friends, who were all present the day Lenni went missing. Her father has been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer, and she hopes this jump in the past will help him. But old secrets begin to emerge, and when another girl goes missing, the truth about Lenni's disappearance start to resurface.

The premise of The Reunion sounded great, but unfortunately the book didn't work for me. It was too slow for my tastes: the first half of the book introduces all the main characters and their relationships, but nothing particularly engrossing happens. The real story starts in the second part, a little late for me. I was still interested to see what would happen and how Lenni's situation would end, but I didn't much care for the characters. Unfortunately, the big twist didn't shock me either: I guessed the culprit and, even after we learn what happened before Lenni was taken, the motive didn't seem so convincing to me.

I was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and independent review.
This psychological thriller flicks between the present and the past, with two stories involving a missing girl. A good array of interesting characters, each with issues and flaws, making the reader have suspicions of their possible involvement in either case. A strong storyline with a good pace, lots of red herrings along the way which left me guessing until almost the end.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. 4.5 stars

I must remember to breath properly again after finishing this book, I think I was holding my breath for the last half hour of reading , wow, what a finish.No spoilers from me but I loved this book, no one was as they seemed and I was suspicious of all or most of them.The setting and story was realistic and the characters were well drawn I could picture the beach, the people , it all seemed very believable but with a sinister undertone.I thought it was fab, the story kept me page turning and reading as fast as I could and when I put my kindle down I couldn't wait to pick it up again, loved it.It was different enough to stand out from the crowd and I liked the writing style, can't fault it and I thoroughly recommend it to readers who enjoy this genre.I am grateful to the Publishers and Netgalley for an ARC.

I've read this author's books before so knew that I was in for a great read. I wasn't disapppointed. The basic scenario is that 20 years on from the disappearance of her sister Lenni, Claire organises a reunion of her friends to get together again in their childhood home in Cornwall. This isn't to mark Lenni's disappearance but to hopefully stimulate the memory of her father who is suffering with Alzheimers. The reader learns early on what has happened to Lenni but there are other twists and turns along the way. The book deals with some upsetting subjects but in a very sensitive way. This book really does leave you hanging on until the last page. A great read.

What a wild ride! This book was such a fantastic read with all the twists and turns it took me on. There were moments that i was like oh OK i got this figured out then BAM i was sidelined and shocked. I fully enjoyed this one. Even with all the characters and going back and fourth between time i didn't find myself confused at all (which i know sometimes can happen) and found this to be a super intriguing and hard to put down read.

Please people read this one it is hands down a great thriller that will keep you guessing till the end and needing to pick your jaw up off the floor!

THANKS NETGALLEY AND TO THE AUTHOR/PUBLISHER!! I hope to read more from this author.

Having read Samantha Hayes other books I was keen to read this, I initially presumed it was about a school reunion but no, more interestingly this book is about a family reunion....where secrets, lies AND the truth are all played out in an exciting, interesting, chilling and shocking storyline
The short version is that 20 years after her Sisters disappearance Claire organises a family reunion ( not really to mark that occasion but to try and stimulate her Dad’s memories and mind as his dementia worsens), all the characters are there from 20 years ago, with some new ones.....just what DID happen to her Sister on that day???...
After a slowish first few chapters the book then ‘zips’ along and carries you headfirst into a fast paced story that ( cliched word alert) grips you and the story gets more and more exciting until you reach the horrible truth, to say more would give things away......
The writing is superb, the characters believable and easy to ‘get to know’ and the whole book thoroughly enjoyable,if unnerving
Some sensitive issues are covered but covered well and with obvious research and understanding
A brilliant book from Samantha Hayes with an ending that you won’t forget easily!!!
10/10 5 stars and highly recommended

What a great read . A story of family and friends and secrets and lies . Fantastic characters and a gripping storyline . I unfortunately figured it out before the end hence the 4.5 stars .. still loved it though . My thanks to bookouture and netgalley for my copy