I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Going Dark by Melissa de la Cruz Published by Union Square & Co. on 1/31/23
Genres: Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Young Adult
Pages: 338
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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#WhereisAmeliaAshley
The Influencer
Amelia Ashley shares everything with her followers – her favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants, her best fashion tips, and her European trip-of-a-lifetime with her hot boyfriend.The Boyfriend
Josh has no choice but to return home without Amelia after she abandons him in Rome. He has no clue where she went or how her blood got in his suitcase. Why won’t anyone believe him?The Hacker
To Harper Delgado, Amelia Ashley is just another missing white girl whipping up a media frenzy. But with each digital knot she untangles about the influencer, Harper wonders: who is Amelia Ashley?The Other Girl
Two years ago, another girl went missing, one who never made headlines or had a trending hashtag.The Truth
Amelia’s disappearance has captured the world’s attention. What comes next? Watch this space…
Short and Sweet Review
Amelia Ashley is a popular influencer who just recently went on a vacation in Rome with her boyfriend Josh, the problem is she didn’t return to the States with him and now she’s missing. All Josh remembers is she got mad at him and left him to go by the airport by himself. Now that Josh is back without Amelia he looks like suspect number one in this missing persons case. Harper Delgado is a hacker and she’s asked by one of Amelia’s friends to look into her disappearance, but what Harper learns about Amelia is shocking and it may help solve a case about a girl who went missing two years ago.
The book starts off with Josh on an airplane back to California without Amelia. Josh is pretty optimistic that she’ll come back even though she’s not with him. Things start to get more serious when Amelia doesn’t answer any phone calls or text and because she’s pretty popular word spreads fast that she’s missing. Josh is an okay character, we see that he’s not right and he’s holding things back when he gets interviewed by the detectives, also he’s kind of stupid because he talks way more than he should. When we meet Harper she’s digging into Amelia Ashley and anything she can find about her life and where she may currently be. There are chapters where Amelia’s blog post are shown and there are transcripts of her vlogs, I liked that this was incorporated into the story because it gave us more of an insight to Amelia’s character. Things got really interesting when we learn about the girl that went missing two years ago and how Amelia Ashley is not a real person. We learn that Josh is the target of this big plan and Harper is really good at finding things that people try to keep hidden.
The plot was great and the different POVs really worked to tell this story. This book will keep you reading until the end to figure out #WhereIsAmeliaAshley.
