99 Red Balloons

Written by Elisabeth Carpenter

Narrated by Sarah Ovens, Victoria Riley, Maggie Ollerenshaw and 2 more

Two girls go missing, decades apart. What would you do if one was your daughter?

When eight-year-old Grace goes missing from a sweetshop on the way home from school, her mother Emma is plunged into a nightmare. Her family rallies around, but as the police hunt begins, cracks begin to emerge.

What are the secret emails sent between Emma’s husband and her sister? Why does her mother take so long to join the search? And is Emma really as innocent as she seems?

Meanwhile, ageing widow Maggie Taylor sees Grace’s picture in the newspaper. It’s a photograph that jolts her from the pain of her existence into a spiralling obsession with another girl – the first girl who disappeared…

This is a gripping psychological thriller with a killer twist that will take your breath away.

‘An intense domestic thriller, twists and turns galore, and a host of family secrets. An absorbing read.’ Paul Finch, bestselling author of Strangers

‘An intelligent, taut and compelling thriller’ Sam Carrington, bestselling author of Saving Sophie

‘Carpenter emerges as an addictive new talent’ Helen Fields, author of Perfect Remains

‘The plot is seamless’ Amanda Robson, author of Obsession

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780008223533

Elisabeth Carpenter

Libby Carpenter lives in Preston with her family. She completed a BA in English Literature and Language with the Open University in 2011.Libby was awarded a Northern Writers’ New Fiction award, and was longlisted for Yeovil Literary Prize (2015 and 2016) and the MsLexia Women’s Novel award (2015). She loves living in the north of England and sets most of her stories in the area, including the novel she is writing at the moment. She currently works as a book keeper.

[EricBarnett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Awesome acting with some fun twists. Definitely entertained from start to finish. The ending left me wanting just a bit more!! But, I think that was the point ?.

[booklovers2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I feel like the book ended too soon! All the drama, broken into about 4 voices was interesting to get the perspective of the same event. The story unfolded slowly and then the ending sped up but I feel like the ending left too much out. I wanted to experience the what happened after! Otherwise, it kept me glued to the story until I was counting the pages down realizing I am not going to experience the best part of this story!

[hjvanderklis_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

99 Red Balloons, the English version of the 1983 Nena hit 99 Luftballons is not the only German influence Elisabeth Carpenter took from her own youth to her latest crime fiction thriller. RAF bases and an elderly couple that has a peculiar way to become foster parents to replace their lost child Stephanie. In the UK two girls went missing some decades apart. The first one, Zoe, of only five years old, leading to headline news and years of police investigations. The second one just recently, a girl named Grace, starts as a classic police interrogation of relatives.

Family secrets, a multitude of characters and their relationships are presented to the reader in short chapters, with Grace's whereabouts in intermezzo chapters as a parallel narrative. with alternating protagonists. Only the family can solve this drama by coming to terms with their past. The actual police involvement is rather pushed back in this book. Cops just do their work and are in the right place, as is the legal process of catching Grace's kidnapper.

The twists and short bites of the 99 Red Balloons story kept me engaged. Yes, I had to note down family ties to keep my mind in sync with Carpenter's storytelling pace. Expect captivating psychological developments, traces of Stockholm Syndrome and the effect of renaming a person. Will paranoia be the new normal, just as the original 99 red balloons could cause paranoia in East Berlin?