I read some of this book and also listened to it on audiobook.

Feedback on the book.
This is my first Alex Finlay book and I’ll be back! It’s not a top thriller book for me but I still enjoyed the journey!
I will say I had it figured out before the end however there was a death I wasn’t expecting.

I liked how you got to know multiple characters and their families, which can sometimes get very confusing however it was done in a very simplified matter and was easy to follow!

I read this book fairly fast and was hooked to figure out how it was going to all play out.

Parents Weekend is a fast-paced thriller that follows the disappearance of 5 college students. Even though it had lots of characters (families of the five students, FBI agent Keller) I still find it easy to follow. Also, the narrative alternates between past and present, revealing secrets and tensions within each family as the plot thickens.

One of the minuses of having so many characters is that their development is lacking depth, making it difficult to connect with any of them. Also, towards the end, around 85% in, I already kind a knew what to expect so I didn't had that OH SHIT moment.

I think this is a 3,5 rounded up to 4 as I still enjoyed reading it!

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced digital copy - all thoughts and opinions are my own!

Alex Finlay's Parent's Weekend is a thrillingly wild ride. Five students go missing shortly after a sixth student on campus has been found dead, and all of their parents were present for the campus's Parents Weekend. We see the return of FBI Agent Sarah Keller for this novel and I was so, so happy . I absolutely loved Finlay's The Night Shift, and I was excited not only to see Keller but to see callbacks. I hope she continues to return.

The pacing was great, Each student's background was a mystery that unraveled, and I was totally surprised by the twist. Highly recommend for any thriller fan!

Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay
Pub date: May 6, 2025
Rating: 4 stars

Family drama meets dark academia in Alex Finlay’s latest twisty thriller, Parents Weekend.

When five sets of parents show up on campus for Parents Weekend, they are surprised when their college-aged kids don’t show up for dinner. At first, it seems like typical college behavior — maybe they’re just blowing them off. But as time goes on, it becomes clear something much more serious is going on. The five students aren’t just missing dinner — they’ve disappeared.

As the search party begins, things get messy fast. Not only are there secrets revealed about the missing students, but the parents themselves are hiding things too. With five very different students involved, the big questions are: who would want to take all of them? And why?

This one was super bingeable — the short chapters made it easy to fly through, and I was hooked the whole time trying to figure out what was going on. It was almost a 5-star read for me, but I did feel like the ending wrapped up a bit too quickly. I would’ve liked a bit more time to let everything sink in. Still, Parents Weekend is a gripping campus thriller, that I'd recommend to fans of The It Girl by Ruth Ware or In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my gifted copy.

Parents Weekend was a popcorn thriller that kept me guessing till the end. Alex Finlay is an auto-read author for me, and if you are a fan I think you will enjoy this one.

Five college freshmen don't show up to the family weekend dinner and it immediately seems like foul play. EVERY PARENT'S NIGHTMARE! A highly-ranked political official's son is among them, so the case is escalated to the FBI. The cast of characters is HUGE. I had to take notes. I think that's what dings my rating a bit; I never felt invested in any of the characters because my energy was going into keeping all of the backstories straight. The mystery is full of dead end leads which slowed the momentum of the story for me.

Apparently this is a part of a series, but I didn't know that until reading other reviews, so safe to say it works just fine as a stand alone book. 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Thanks to NetGalley for early access to this book.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read and review this book. All opinions are my own.
This is an enjoyable mystery. At a small private college in Northern California, five families have decided to have dinner together. This is to celebrate Parent's Weekend. When the time comes the parents show up, but not the kids. Where are they? What has happened to them? Soon the police and FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller are called in. It was fun to read and find out what happened to these young adults. I recommend this book if you like mysteries centered around schools.

I really enjoyed this book! It kept me guessing and wanting to figure out who actually did what! Perfect beach read for the summer, highly recommend!

PARENTS WEEKEND isn't going quite as anyone expected at prestigious Santa Clara University. Just before it begins, a coed named Natasha Belov who was reported missing is found dead in one of the local sea caves. And some of the students at Campisi Hall believe they know what happened to her.

Still, they are planning to join their parents for dinner on Friday night, but none of them show up. This leads to the FBI being called in. Special Agent Sarah Keller is the one who answers the call. She's temporarily assigned to the office since she, her husband, and her twins are spending some time in California with her husband's father who is dying.

With one of the missing being the son of an Assistant Secretary of State who is under death threats, the situation could be political. As the situation develops, we learn more about the sets of parents who all have conflicts of their own to deal with from unreliable exes to stalkers. And we learn more about the students who all have a variety of secrets of their own.

This was an engaging story told from multiple viewpoints. I especially liked seeing Keller again. I enjoyed the suspense and the revelations about the students and their parents.

it is parents weekend at college, five families gather for dinner but their children never show up. what has happened to them? good story

Thank you SMP and Macmillan for review copies.

This one was not a win for me. Excellent as always narration from favorite Brittany Pressley so I want to say the audiobook is just fine in terms of narration and production.

But this plot was just all over the place and never worked for me at all and I say that as a fan of previous Alex Finlay books. I think this is a case of too many characters/POVs, truly unlikable and underdeveloped characters, and never getting into a sense of suspense, dread, or real mystery vibe. The only part that was a big win for me was the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller, she is the only character that I felt at all interested in and that's because she is well developed, a returning character.

This was a twisty thriller. I appreciated the academic setting but just too many characters that I almost lost interest. This was just an okay popcorn thriller. I had quite a hard time trying to decipher which family went with which college kid it was just kind of a blend. I did enjoy the narrator but it was just hard to follow on audio. I did an immersive read and it just did not work for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this book
3 star

I loved this!! I think this is my favorite of Alex Finlay’s books since THE NIGHT SHIFT and it was fun to reunite with Agent Keller! While I guessed some of the mystery, there were several twists that surprised me and I loved the layers and different family perspectives. The atmosphere was also perfect between the academic college setting and the darkness of the caves nearby. Such a great thriller!

3.5 Five college students are missing over parents weekend. I really liked how the chapters were headed by the family names and shed laugh t on how they may be relevant to the missing five. this was a fast entertaining read. The conclusion gets convoluted with too many distractions that limits the potential clever ending. Not a deep dive into character development but enjoyable as a surface read. I like the strong female FBI agent and will seek her out in other books by this author.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

2-Star Review: A Parent’s Weekend by Alex Finlay

While A Parent’s Weekend was enjoyable in moments, it ultimately fell short of the gripping tension and layered twists I’ve come to expect from Alex Finlay. The pacing felt uneven, and the suspense never quite reached the intensity of his previous novels. For longtime fans, it may come across as more of a detour than a destination. A decent read, but lacking the punch Finlay usually delivers.

I couldn't gave this one 5 stars though it was a page turner, but, yeah, there's a but....it needed more. The characters were more one dimensional, hard to relate to one way or another. I had been looking forward to reading this one for some time and was a little disappointed. Would I recommend it? Probably, for anyone who wants a quick read and has a few hours to burn.

Parents Weekend was ok. The first 6(?) chapters were each introducing a new family and new characters. Get your pencils ready!
The issue with too many characters in one short book is they aren’t given the time and depth needed to differentiate from each other. The missing students and some of the fancy rich parents along with side characters all blended together.
I really liked the FBI agent Keller, who is a recurring character from a couple of his other books. This is clear because she’s the most real person in the whole thing.

The action and resolution were SO quick. Like, not much suspense at all. One sentence and it was over. I just found it to be such a jarring ending to the mystery I was left wondering what just happened. And why.

This one is definitely fast paced and short if you’re looking for a little pop-corn mystery or just a palette cleanser.. but I can’t say I liked it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

I enjoyed the separate timelines joining in at the end for the big reveal. The FBI agent was perfect..strong logical detective that used everything in her arsenal to figure it out. The ending was a bit shocking especially when the killer was revealed and what played out after but books with that sort of jaw dropping turn of events stick with you.

This book is like the slow-burn romance of the thriller world—pulling you in inch by inch, keeping you on the hook, and then BOOM, you're hit with a twists!

What I really loved was how engaged I felt in the mystery-solving process alongside Agent Keller. Not all crime mysteries make you feel like you’re in the investigator’s shoes, but Finlay nailed that. Now, let’s talk drawbacks—there were a LOT of characters. I mean, I didn’t have trouble keeping track of them, but holy smokes, the cast was massive. And while I could follow the action, I never really connected with any of the characters, so I didn’t feel that burning desire to know what happened to them. As for the suspense? It didn’t quite keep me on the edge of my seat until the last couple of chapters, but once the twists came, they came HARD.

Overall, though? A solidly well-written mystery that kept me turning pages. If you're looking for a book that draws you in slowly but surely, give this one a shot!

Requested this as I enjoy Alex Finlay's books but this one missed the mark. This should have been a quick read with the short chapters and changing characters but I was not being pulled in.

Five students from a college capstone group go missing on parents weekend at their college. After days missing, FBI Agent Keller works with the campus security to unfold the connection between the mysterious vanishing of the Five students and a recent campus death.

It takes 70, albeit short, chapters to go through what happened. While I did enjoy the ending, it wasn't worth getting through the rest of the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC!