I liked different things in this really good book a recovering alcoholic that wants to find and care about people that are still missing I was hooked from the start

A fast paced police procedure with a difference. A civilian comes into town who excels in finding missing people. She does it for no reward. Its a fast paced story with lots of twists and turns. Some slightly far fetched events but hey it makes for a great story! It all kicks off in days with Frankie finding her first clue to the missing girl. Great descriptives of a very undesirable suburb of Boston, however, despite the fear some great characters come out it. A good read with a unique story.

Angelique Badeau is known as Lili to her friends lives with her brother Emmanuel and her Aunt Guerline their mother lived on Haiti and sent the kids over after the last big storm as they called it
Lili is an A grade student wants to be a doctor attends all her classes and does after school classes too so why has she suddenly walked out of school and not been seen for the last eleven months 
Along comes Frankie Elkin she is no cop, no reporter just an ex alcoholic who looks for missing people so far she has found them but been too late they were all ready dead 
This time she is determined to find Lili alive. So she finds a job in a bar and it comes with a flat she can live in and she starts at the beginning talking with the family and looking at where Lili lived where she went to school  who were her friends. 
She talks to the cop working the case Detective Latham who shows her eventually what they have having  checked her out. He agrees to her help and they start to unpick a complicated web of fake ids and other missing girl 
This book has so many twists and turns I had no idea how it would end it was not how I thought but it will certainly keep you reading to the very end

'Before She disappeared' a standalone novel by Lisa Gardner will take you on a journey to uncover the reason and story behind the disappearance of Angellique. Built into the story is the intrigue and journey for the reader to understand the proagonist Frankie Elkin. The combination of these two aspects brings about a journey with lot of suspense and thrill.

Frankie Elkin in a recovering alcoholic whose misson in life is too look for missing people. She comes into the Matappan community of Boston. As she is the only white woman in the neighborhood, she not only has to become a part of the community to solve the mysterious disappearance of Angelique and also to deal with the law enforcement agency.

This story is thrilling with a lot of suspense. Apart from the case, Frankie Elkin's way of getting to solve the mystery is what kept me hooked to the story. Her way at interpreting and trying to understand the various people in the story and also her efforts to become a part of the community is what was very interesting. Her relationship with the Boston PD and her point of view of things is very engaging.

If you love to read mysteries then this one is for you. If you love to read stories with many characters and understand the complexity of realtionships then this is definitely for you.
I thank the publisher and Netgalley for approving my request to review the book. The opinions expressed are all mine.

I very much enjoyed this book.  It has a good story and excellent main characters.  I would definately recommend this book.

Frankie, an alcoholic, has given up everything and devoted her life to finding missing people. Unfortunately,  so far none have come back alive.  Her new case brings her to Boston in search of a missing girl. Police have no leads and don’t welcome Frankie’s interest in the case. Some of the locals are exactly keen on her involvement either.
She soon discovers that there is more than one girl missing but each new lead uncovers more and more confusion regarding their disappearance and what they both got caught up in.
Throughout the book Frankie has flashbacks about a traumatic event in her life and with each one the reader learns more about what happened and why she embarked on her crusade to save missing people. 
I love reading Lisa Gardner’s books and this one certainly didn’t disappoint. Looking forward to the next one.

Lisa Gardener at her best with the first stand alone book for a very long time.
Frankie is a drifter and looks into cases of missing people but only when the police dept seem to have no clues and have more or less given up hope. Having just successfuly ending a case she goes on to look at a missing girl and finds herself a room to live in while she investigates. I loved Frankie's character even though she is a little abrasive and the collaberation with Logan even though he is a police detective. I did feel quite sad that this might be all we learn about Frankie as it is a stand alone book so I will have to wait and see if the author uses her again.

I don't usually read thrillers/crime books but this one caught my attention. I'm aware of Lisa Gardner from the library as she's a very popular author. 
I'm so pleased I read this book - it gripped me from the start. I loved the characterisation of the main protagonist Frankie. Lisa Gardner describes the environment where Frankie finds herself so well, I could see the streets and taste the Haitian food she writes about. It's a culture I knew nothing about before reading this and I found it so interesting. Frankie's flashbacks to what happened to her and her struggles with alcohol abuse are sympathetically written and I really felt for her. Her hunt for a missing girl is fast-paced and I so wanted to find out what happened next. Very much a case of "one more chapter" each time I picked the book up.
It's a modern-day thriller with a techno-twist and I definitely recommend it.

Frankie Elkin isn't your typical woman she has taken it upon herself to find the missing. She has had some luck in finding the missing but unfortunately most of them have been deceased but she just wants to give closure to the families. Her next missing person is a young girl Angelique who just disappeared one day from school. Can she gain the trust of her family to help or will her being white be a problem?
The more Frankie digs into the missing girl's life the more she finds out about the bad elements that surround the children daily. With the help Detective Lotham she will find out the truth she just hopes that she finds Angelique alive?
Will Frankie ever be able to settle in one place or will her guilt about her past keep her moving endlessly? A good read. 
I was lucky enough to receive a copy via Netgalley & the publishing house in exchange for my honest review.

I like reading Lisa Gardner’s books and this one is no exception. She draws you in from the first chapter and you are hooked.  The characters are well described and believable and the plot is well researched and unfolds at a perfect pace.  My only slight criticism is that Frankie’s thoughts of what had happened and what might happen was a little repetitive but I guess it did keep consolidating the story for any reader who had failed to remember all the nuances.  I look forward to reading more by this talented author.

I love this author and yet again this book did not disappoint. This time we follow Frankie as she moves from town to town trying to find out what happened to the missing when the police give up. Although putting herself and her sobriety in danger she works tirelessly to find the answers and bring some peace to the family. This time she is hunting down a missing girl in the hope of reuniting or at least bring some peace to a family who need answers and a brother who is convinced his sister did not just run away. With a town  set against her Frankie has her work cut out for her and is putting herself in danger as she refuses to give up until she finds the girl. Great story and a really interesting and flawed character I really like her.

Frankie is a woman driven by shame and guilt. She desperately wants to make something right, something that happened ten years ago. That’s why she moves around the country searching for missing persons. This time the missing girl is Angelique, now 16 years old, gone missing eleven month ago.
I liked the story, the pace and the deep insight in the mind of a desperate woman and the many hours of work dedicated to bring someone home - dead or alive.

As an avid reader, what I love most is finding a new author that I've not come across before. 
Before She Disappeared is my first time delving into this authors work and I'm excited...
Thrilled in fact to discover she has many more books written for me to follow up.
In this story we are introduced to Frankie Elkin.
I found Frankie to be almost like a Mary Poppins type character. Stay until the wind changes or in this case stay until she finds the missing person and then move on.
Frankie has dedicated her life to working on missing person cases.
She travels the country light but with a multitude of baggage if you could believe it. 
Light in terms of possessions...but she carries with her a multitude of inner demons, doing an almost daily battle with them.
The disappearance of a young fifteen year old girl Angelique Badeau brings Frankie to Boston. To a neighbourhood where she should not go out at night and if she does, she is watching over both shoulders...
While working in a bar with accommodation upstairs, Frankie now has a base and sets about getting to know the locals and the young missing girls family and friends.
She settles in quite quickly and gets to working on the case in her private capacity albeit along side the rather reluctant Detective Lotham assigned to the case.
She is stepping on toes but she knows she's not here to make friends.
So can they solve the disappearance of this young girl together. 
Can they bring some comfort to her distraught family or is Frankie putting herself in danger just by poking her nose around and even being involved with them.
A very slow burning read I felt but worth your time and effort.
Frankie I did feel is a character you either like or you don't...
She is rough around the edges but her heart is in the right place..
A standalone too and not part of a series...

Although set in the Boston stomping grounds of Gardner's recurring characters DD Warren and Flora Dane, Before She Disappeared is a standalone thriller which follows Frankie Elkin, a middle aged woman driven to seek out, and try to solve, missing persons cases. As a thriller it is trademark Gardner: at times heart-poundingly tense with superb character development and more twists than a roller coaster. And with the cases Elkin takes on being restricted to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) women, the book has some interesting things to say about White Saviourism and how police resources in modern America are used (or not used). For me, it didn't go quite far enough in critiquing both, but I appreciated the attempt.

What a great read.  I enjoyed every page and can’t recommend this book enough.  I liked Frankie and wanted her to beat her demons and find Angelique.  It's a rollercoaster journey with some hold-your-breath moments along the way, but so worth it

Lisa Gardner always delivers.  This is so different from any of her other stand alone thrillers and it is so compulsive.  I loved Frankie and her many flaws.  She is an alcoholic and it seemed so realistic, her recovery, her fragility, her need to make amends.  Her story of travelling around, tracing missing people, find them albeit dead is so real.  I could read more of this, especially with a side-kick of Lotham and a dose of Piper and  Stoney.  The story is complex,  the characters are well-rounded, Frankie is a lone, intelligent white woman who is trying to keep herself going through hard graft and AA meetings with a purpose of finding these lost souls. A thriller with heart and soul.

Every different read from Lisa Gardener. A very unique and unusual thriller featuring a middle aged woman who hunts for missing people. She is dogged ,determined and uncaring of her own safety but she gets results.

This is a book that is easy to get into and hard to put down.
The lead character is likeable and determined to solve missing cold cases, despite having made some poor decisions in the past. You see everything through her eyes and get to understand her thought processes as she talks to the families involved.
The book is well written and flows well, indeed it is easy to think you will read just a little more until you realise it is now the early hours. I recommend this engaging book.
Thanks to Netgalley for an arc for my honest  review.

I am a huge Lisa Gardner fan and have read all her books, series and standalone thrillers. This one certainly didn’t disappoint. It kept me hooked from the beginning and I couldn’t wait to find out how it would end. Very enjoyable read

I've been a Lisa Gardner fan for years though this has mostly been her Detective D.D. Warren series so I was excited to read something a little different from her. Before She Disappeared didn't disappoint and I thoroughly enjoyed this stand alone novel (or what I think is a stand alone, although it definitely could turn into a series). Before She Disappeared has everything a top tier thriller needs with an edge-of-your-seat writing style dropping near constant clues to decipher what has happened to Angelique Badeau. This is incredibly gripping and very clever through the absolute spot on portrayal of today's young people, the crystal clear imagery of Boston and the interesting insights into gangs, crime and how new technology is being utilised illegally. This was a page-turner and in terms of the characters - Angelique, her brother, Stoney, Livia to name a few - very strong; there are a lot of characters in this and for once I found I was able to keep track of them all and form emotional responses to their personalities. This didn't quite make 5 stars for me because however good it was, I do not think it will be unforgettable (I've already read some very solid reads in 2021 so maybe I am judging too harshly). Additionally I just didn't warm to Frankie Elgin, and therefore found her backstory a little lacklustre, wanting to skip ahead to the missing person parts instead. I'd still happily recommend to Gardner and crime thriller fans alike. 

*I received an advance review copy of Before She Disappeared from the publisher via NetGalley.