Review: Looking for Alex by Marian Dillon

Title: Looking for Alex
Author: Marian Dillon
Series: Standalone
Format: eBook, eARC
My rating: 2.5 / 5
eARC recieved from publishers,
Carina UK via Netgalley

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They were supposed to be best friends... It's the summer of 1977, Beth and Alex did everything together. Until the day seventeen year old Alex ran away from home. A missing persons report has been filed, but Beth knows that there must be more to Alex's disappearance. So she follows Alex, to punk-era London, determined to bring her best friend back home.

But the Alex she finds living in a Camden squat isn't the same Alex. And memories of those weeks in London haunt her to this day; falling for Fitz, her first love; tasting a new kind of freedom, and the fateful day that her parents finally tracked them down and took her away.

Alex knew then that Beth had betrayed her trust, and disappeared once more, severing their friendship for good. And now, years later, it's time for forgotten secrets to be shared once and for all. Because after all this time, Beth's never given up on finding Alex...

-- As seen on Goodreads

I received this book from the publishers, with thanks to Carina UK, in exchange for an honest review. This did not influence my opinion in any way.

My Thoughts

Looking for Alex starts out in the present day when Beth, our main character and narrator, runs into an old childhood friend at one of the training seminars she hosts. They get talking about old times, and this drags up memories of her friend Alex, who disappeared when they were teenagers.

This is one of those occasions where I’ll say it’s not the book, it’s me. I went in with the wrong expectations. Just by the title alone, I was expecting a mystery/suspense plot, and I ended up getting a trip down memory lane. I feel really bad saying it, but my expectations were not met at all.

I liked everything that was presented well enough; it just wasn’t the book I thought I was going to read! This is swaying my opinion more to the neutral/negative than it might have been if I knew beforehand not to expect a fast plot with lots of twists and turns. When a novel is told via flashbacks it runs the risk of disturbing the flow of a story, and this happened to me a fair bit. I’d be settling into the story and the timeline would change again, and my interest would begin to slip. Everything was wrapped up as expected, and even though I didn’t connect with any of the characters, I was happy with the outcome.

In short, for the right reader that has the right mind-set going into this book, I think they’ll really enjoy the story. I didn’t get the story I was expecting, so that has left me with a rather negative outlook. If you like stories featuring reminiscing and re-discovering old friendships and relationships then give this book a shot, I pretty much guarantee you’ll like it more than I did!