There were a lot of characters - which was a little intimidating in the beginning - but I really did like all of them and think that if any of them were not there you would miss them. It helped that most of the story ran through Agent Keller.

It was a unique story and a little predictable but I enjoyed it. I love when the ending is close to something I have figured out instead of some "twist" that doesn't make sense. Alex's writing has a way of sucking you in and not wanting to put the book down.

4 stars

This is my first read by Alex Finlay, and it did not disappoint.

It took me a few chapters to get into this one because there are multiple point of views. but it all came together and eventually made perfect sense.

As 5 college kids go missing, it’s a race for time as their parents struggle to find where they are and why they are missing. The multiple point of views really allowed the reader to see the many character behaviors and get an insight on why these kids are missing. Overall I liked the story and am excited to read previous books by this author. It was a good story and I enjoyed it.

I switched between the audio and book version of this book. The narrator did a great job with the multiple characters in the audio version.

***Thank you Netgalley and MacMillan audio for and ARC copy for an honest review***

Hmmm this was not totally what I was expecting. If you’re looking for a quick, short, popcorn thriller kind of book you may be interested in this one. However keep in mind there are several characters and due to the novel’s short length it’s hard to give life to all of them. I wouldn’t even say this was a thriller because there’s no twist ending.

Every time I’m in the mood for an easy thriller read, Alex Finlay fits the bill. Something about his writing just flows right off the page and keeps me engaged right from the start. Short chapters and an exciting plot kept me turning pages throughout his latest book.

My only criticism for this one was that there were a lot of characters to keep straight. We had six students who go missing, each with parents who are of course worried about them. We also have a FBI investigator who is looking for them and her entire family including children, a father in law and sister in law. At times, I could forget who was who and it took me a minute to remember who the shady characters were.

Overall, a super easy and fun read from Alex Finlay! Thank you NetGalley, St. Martins Press and Minotaur Books for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy. This gripping thriller unfolds during Parents Weekend at a Northern California college, where five students mysteriously vanish. This leaves their families and turmoil and prompts a high-stakes investigation led by FBI Agent Sarah Keller. The novel's fast-paced narrative and multiple perspectives keep the suspense high, though the frequent shifts between characters can occasionally disrupt the flow. While some character development felt surface-level, I was still engaged the whole time. Overall, it's an entertaining read that delves into family dynamics and secrets, making it a great read for fans of thrillers.

Thank you for this advance copy of PARENTS WEEKEND by Alex Finlay. What a fast-paced, unique, thrilling read!

Alex Finlay does no wrong! His thrillers do not let you down and Parents Weekend is no exception. 5 college students are missing and one is already dead. In typical Finlay fashion, this novel is told from MULTIPLE POV's- be prepared to take notes to keep track of everything. You have to pay attention to be sure you don't miss any details. The short chapters keeps your attention and you don't want to put it down! A quick read that wraps up nicely. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC!

Parents Weekend is the new book from Alex Finlay. I've read and enjoyed his previous titles and I knew I was going to enjoy Parents Weekend.
Why? Well...first is the lead character - FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller. She's brilliant and is always a step ahead. I really enjoy how she finds the next steps.

The plot is a good one - five college kids are missing - and one is already dead. And another reason to hunker down - the book is told from multiple view points - and it's hard to put the book down. And of course some are lying, leaving out pieces of their accounts and more... Piecing everything in time is Keller's goal.

Alex Finlay keeps the suspense up on every page. Parents Weekend reads like a movie.

I’ve read all of Finlay‘s books and I’ve enjoyed every single one so I was excited to read Parents Weekend.

I really liked the premise of this one, particularly because I have two kids in college. It’s a fascinating time in life when you are just kind of thrown together with people from all different backgrounds. The focus on these five different families and what secrets they might be hiding was very intriguing. Tension mounts throughout the story until the very end. It had all the things I love in thrillers - twists and turns, kept me guessing, lots of possible suspects.

Parents Weekend is getting a lot of buzz and it’s well deserved!

I really loved a few of Alex Finlay's earlier books but lately they've not been grabbing me in the same way. I usually don't mind being thrown straight into a book (actually I usually prefer it) but this one felt like I put my foot on a treadmill that was going 15mph and I had been thrown off the end over a cliff. I really struggled to get into it and then keep track of everything and everyone. I really hope Finlay's books circle back to the style he was using in his earlier books because those were definitely more my style.

The beginning was quite hard to get into, the amount of characters was difficult to keep straight. I did think the story would focus more on the students and not the parents, however it was an ok read with nice short chapters.

I love a good thriller. I mainly read romances so it's fun to switch it up. This was a great thriller to pick up. It's the story of 5 families navigating what happens with their kids go missing at parents weekend at their college.

When the book started there were so many characters to keep straight. I found it a little overwhelming but once the book got going, I was following along well. I really enjoyed FBI Agent Keller. She was brought in to find out what happened. I enjoyed the twists and turns and I was so curious to find out what happened too. I thought included the lost kids narrative every so often was a good move too because it makes you more curious what is going on. A solid thriller.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced copy. Opinions are my own.

✌🏼for Tuesday
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Happy Tuesday! I’m drowning in content to post so I’m hoping on to post a double review today! Here are my thoughts !
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Parents Weekend- this was unfortunately my least favorite Finlay, which is a shame because I enjoyed his last one (forever nostalgic for the 90s). This one was full of too many characters and just the worst parents. I felt like they weren’t truly concerned about where their children were. I didn’t really care for or connect to any of them. The premise of children going missing at a college parents weekend was fun but it got bogged down with WAY too many characters. I really couldn’t keep track of them all. All in all, this one was a bit of a snooze fest. I gave it 2 stars.
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QOTD- what is your current read?! I’m working on book 3 of the crescent city series and One Golden Summer- I’m loving both 😍
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I have a very mixed relationship with this author - I've given his previous books both one and five stars - so I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. It ended up being middle of the road for me. It was a thrilling, fast read but nothing super memorable.

I loved this book. As a special Ed teacher however this book would not be suited for my younger students. I will highly recommend it for my book clubs as well as for our local library members being I am one of the board member. This book was very well written and kept my attention. I did not want to put it down!

A group of friends goes missing at the same time their parents are visiting them at college for parents weekend. I enjoyed that this one had short chapters, multiple POV's, and was a quick read. There were a lot of characters, so I feel like they were difficult to keep straight at times. There were a few twists and turns throughout this one -- some that I saw coming and some I didn't. Overall, I found this one enjoyable. If you're looking for a quick read, set on a college campus, this would be a good one to pick up.

The only thing worse, to a typical college freshman, than having their parents come for a visit, is having everyone’s parents on campus to visit.

In other words? The dreaded Parents Weekend... full of assorted activities for students and parents alike, beginning with the opening night dinner, when groups of parents and their kids mingle.

But for five families—who’ve traveled from all over the U.S. to see how their offspring are coping with freshman life—that dinner takes an unexpected turn... when not one of their kids shows up.

Is it just a matter of irresponsible teens, acting out? Perhaps some sort of fraternity/sorority hazing ritual they’re fulfilling? Or... something else??

That’s the million-dollar question on everyone’s mind in Alex Finlay’s latest thriller, Parents Weekend.


At small, private Santa Clara University, located on the coast of Northern California, freshmen are divided into small “pods” within their residence halls, to encourage friendships in the new environment.

One of those pods, whose members all live in Campisi Hall, has bonded well. Handsome Blane Roosevelt, from D.C., has embraced the California lifestyle. New Yorker Stella Maldonado oozes self-confidence and charm. Felix Goffman, the rare local, is a shy, considerate, scholarship kid. L.A.-native Libby Akana is a pleaser and overachiever. And Mark Wong, who reveals little of his background, is the prankster of the bunch.

The parents, of course, are vastly different—from their children, as well as from one another—and feeling awkward, without benefit of the kids that would’ve united them. So, they take a page out of (most) college-students’ handbooks... breaking the ice via trays of tequila shots, before dinner and drinks.

Annoyances at their absent offspring are—understandably—somewhat muted, for the rest of the evening.

When the next day dawns—and wanes—with nary one of the kids showing up... not calling, texting, or anything... the parents begin to worry, once more.

But, when word hits campus that another student—a grade or two ahead—has been discovered at a nearby beach, dead, well... that’s when panic sets in, hard.

It’s also when the students’ disappearances become a national media frenzy... and when newly-relocated FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller gets pulled from her nearby office onto the scene.

For Sarah, who has two grade-school-aged children of her own, there couldn’t be a more important—or more terrifying—case... and she’ll stop at nothing to try to bring those missing kids back to their families.


Parents Weekend is, at its core, your basic missing persons story. Finlay does some very clever things, though, to make it feel modern and fresh.

First, the five students come across as very real, very believable characters. He nails all of the angst, uncertainty, frustrations, temptations, and petty sniping so common among college freshmen.

He also gives us an intimate look at their lives and the family relationships (child-to-parent, and parent-to-parent), which is helpful in understanding why all of them do the things they do.

Probably the coolest thing, for me, that Finlay does lies in his structuring of the book. Each chapter either concerns the missing kids (going back and forth in time), or one of the sets of parents. (So, a chapter that’s going to focus on, say, Libby’s parents/family, is headed, “The Akanas”.)

It’s a device that makes it immediately clear who he’s focusing on for the next several pages—whose POV we’ll be getting—and it also gives us handy little brackets, to easily remember what we’ve already read about them.

Even better, he doesn’t just reserve this technique for the students’ families—he begins chapters dealing with Special Agent Sarah (and/or her family) with “The Kellers”, thus making her family life equally relevant to us, as well as to the case.

Of course, it’s crucial that the Big Reveal at book’s end seems “right”, given what we’ve been told and learned in all those previous pages... and happily, it does, with Finlay nailing the ending.

Parents Weekend was a treat to read... the action, confusion, and all of the suspicions kept me hooked from the first few pages.

If you’re looking for engaging, fast-paced suspense—in an unusual setting—this should definitely find its way onto your shortlist!
~GlamKitty



[My sincere thanks to St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are, as always, entirely my own.]

Alex Finlay is back with a thriller where every family has its secrets:

It's Parents Weekend, that one time during the year where the parents come to college and check up on their kids. It's supposed to be a time of reconnecting, meeting the friends they have been hanging out with and maybe a nice dinner. This was supposed to happen at a small private school in California, instead the night turns into a nightmare with five kids disappearing without a trace and the clock is ticking down to if they will find them before it is too late.

I have been reading Finlay's book and Agent Keller from the beginning, and I love that she is back in this book and a different capacity. She has totally moved away from financial crimes but I love that she still has that mind in her tenacity of look for data. If you have not read and books with Agent Keller, that is okay, while there is a sentence or two that relate back to other books featuring her, you do not need to read them to understand this book. I will say that because there are multiple POV in this book you may not feel the connection to Agent Keller or any of the characters as they do not get a lot of page time.

There are a few things that you need to know before going into this book, if you like short chapters this is for you, the chapters are only a few pages long at most. There are quite a few POV (and if you have read other books by Finlay this will not be a surprise for you), six families to be exact plus some POV from the college students as well. So if you do not like multiple POV this book will not be for you, but i do think that Finlay does a good job of keeping them unique so that it was not confusing

I love that this book was full of secrets. Everyone and every family seemed to have a secret that they were keeping from other family members and each has hope that theirs will not be discovered. I enjoyed how all of these secrets interfered with the investigation as each one comes to light it needs to be investigated for a connection. This felt very real to me, and the whole no stone unturned in order to kind the college students. I will say I was able to figure who was responsible, but Finlay does a great job in have lots of twist, turns and red herrings along the way. I enjoyed how each new piece of evidence was discovered even if it was relevant or not.

This was a fun ride, not my favourite in the Agent Keller series (The Night Shift is my favourite so far) as I felt she had less page time than I would like, but still a solid read that I think that people will enjoy whether they have read Finlay before or not.

Enjoy!!!

I am a big fan of Alex Finlay's books, always have been, and Parents Weekend was no disappointment. I enjoyed the multiple POV's that the story was told from, and the way that the story unfolded. It was fast paced, twisty and high stakes. I also loved that FBI agent Sarah Keller returned to lead the investigation.

It’s parents weekend at a small private school in Northern California. The parents and their children are supposed to be meeting for a dinner at The Hut. As the parents meet for dinner, the children never show. At first, everyone chalks it up to kids being kids. But soon it becomes clear that it’s more than that. And with a recent student death, it’s time to take it seriously and call in reinforcements.. the FBI. Five students missing. What could have happened to them? And why have they disappeared?

This was another fantastic book by Finlay. We see the re-introduction of Agent Sarah Keller who was in The Night Shift and another one of Finlay’s books. Though, this isn’t a series and you definitely don’t need to read those books in order to read this book. This book is engaging and fast paced. Finlay keeps the mystery going as Agent Keller and the rest of the team keep looking for leads, dispelling leads, and try to find more clues.

There are a lot of red herrings in this book, and it’s filled with family drama. But when it boils down to revealing who was behind the kids missing, I never put it together. I may not be the best judge of that as I’m not usually good at figuring out what’s going on!

I will say this: there are a lot of characters and the book is told from multiple points of view. At times, I forgot who was who (especially in the beginning). So while I understand this choice made sense for this book, it was a little much for me.

Otherwise, super enjoyable!