I found this book just ok for me, there was enough mystery and I enjoyed how it was written but I found my mind would wander during some of it and I would have to re read as I would lose interest. Just really didn't keep me gripped enough unfortunately. Maybe this author isn't for me.

Startlingly refreshing, with an amazing sense of time passing - you become tuned to the seasons passing, and the stories of the entire village become as known to you as those of your own personal community. The strands that weave through from the missing girl linger for generations.

I fully acknowledge the reason I gave this book two stars might have been me rather than because the book was bad. I tried Jon McGregor's work once before: If noone speaks of remarkable things was the book I tried and I hated it. After reading this book I realised his writing style is just not for me.
I liked the sound of the book but I hated it, I just found it really dull. I was expecting to read a story about the missing girl and for the details of lives in the village to be the filler but instead it felt like the other way round.
"They gathered at the car park in the hour before dawn and wanted to be told what to do. It was cold and there was little conversation. There were questions that weren't being asked. The missing girl's name was Rebecca Shaw."
Rebecca had been out for a walk with her parents when she disappeared, they had come to stay in the village for New Year. She was 13 years old, five feet tall and had dark blonde hair.
"They'd come running into the village at dusk, shouting. It was a cold night to have been out on the hill. She's likely just hiding, people said. She'll be down in a clough. Turned her ankle. She'll be aiming to give her parents a fright." Peppered throughout the book are observations from the villagers about what happened to the girl. Many of the villagers also seem to know more about the events than they are letting on.
However, life goes on and it does so in drearily minute detail.
I am not the only to have reviewed this book though and many of the reviewers seem to have enjoyed the book much more than I did.