99 Red Balloons by Elisabeth Carpenter was a good effort.

I almost stopped reading a few times. The jumping back and forth by decades was well done but I had to stop and recall who was who.

The storyline is interesting but not unique.

Thank you, ( )

Wow! I loved this book. It's a super fast-paced story that had me on the edge of my seat and looking back now I can see that all of the clues were there but I walked, no make that RAN, past every one of them. If reading was a race, I would have won a gold medal for reading 99 Red Balloons.

With two stories of missing children, both are absolutely heartbreaking. Firstly, the story in the present is of sisters, Emma and Steph. Emma's daughter, Grace, has gone missing and it's usually a time when the family would rally round but this family is ODD. Emma and Steph's mother virtually has to be dragged there to support her daughter and Emma's husband seems to be hiding something...something that Steph is privy to.

The past story is about Maggie whose granddaughter, Zoe, was abducted. Zoe's mother, Sarah, died of a broken heart and Maggie never gave up looking for Zoe. She knows exactly what Emma is going through and I've read enough psychological thrillers to know that the two stories would link somehow, but I didn't expect them to come together is such a spectacular fashion.

99 Red Balloons is a proper edge of your seat, race against time, rollercoaster ride that had my heart rate soaring to danger levels. A magnificent debut by Elisabeth Carpenter that will be difficult to beat. Highly recommended.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion. ( )

Ok I am a mystery, thriller and true crime junkie- and I am not 'off my game' this week at all and yet I totally missed a clue that came to me immediately in the reveal
It has been along time since I missed a clue and guessed an ending!!!
Big props to Elisabeth Carpenter for executing this perfectly- I am so delighted with this story and ending! ( )

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! ( )

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? ( )