Dakota Kilroy is an investigative journalist living in New York City. She is forced to move back to her childhood home in Santa Monica, California after being laid off. Back home she is haunted by her past. When she was in high school her best friend, Maddy Montgomery, disappeared. Dakota decides to use her skills as an investigative journalist to find out really what happened to Maddy all those years ago. She starts a true crime podcast, ShadowCast, to publicize the case and gain some new leads. With the help of Sean, a CEO with an interest in true crime, Dakota is close to solving this case. But Maddy’s kidnapper is listening, and he will stop at nothing to keep his secrets. I could not put this book down! It alternated between Dakota and the kidnapper's POV. It is full of twists and turns. I tend to find a lot of "thrillers" to be predictable but that is not true of this book. However, I did have some issues with this book. It felt like the protagonist lucked into a lot of her answers. The ending also felt rushed, and the main romance was questionable to say the least. But overall I enjoyed this book. ( )

This shows potential. Some of the twists and turns were predictable but some weren't as predictable. From the outset you know who the killer is but the uncovering is as important to the reader as to the detective.
Dakota Kilroy is an investigative reporter whose life in New York has fallen apart and she has to return home to her over-protective family. She's back in Santa Monica, California, and now she has an opportunity to revisit her best friends disappearance. She creates a podcast, Shadowcast, to see if the many fans of true-life mysteries will help. She doesn't really think about the ramifications of this action and how it might affect others who might have been affected by it all. The romantic element didn't sit well with me at all and occasionally things appeared to need some extra editing.
Overall it was a good first novel and I would read more by this author. ( )

This is an enjoyable psychological thriller. We, the readers, know from page one that Freddy did the deed. Dakota Kilroy, an out-of-work journalist investigating the unsolved disappearance of her best friend some twelve years earlier, doesn't know what we know. The story is told through two POVs: Dakota's and Freddy's. How Dakota unfolds the events leading up to Maddy's fate and how Freddy does his best to thwart her investigation is what keeps this story compelling and intriguing to the end.

Morris has compiled a full and varied list of characters from Dakota, the driven and persistent investigative journalist who couldn't be any more different to her mother and sisters, to the warped and twisted Freddy and his long-suffering mother, now having to relent to some of the less-pleasant gifts of aging.

I'll be honest: there are a couple of 'hmm, really?' moments, where the plot hits a few conveniences and improbabilities, but, hey, it's fiction, and my enjoyment of a story that never loses momentum makes them pale into insignificance.

This is a debut novel and one that has assured a place for Morris in my 'read more of' list. I'm pretty sure Dakota and her compulsion to dig deep has many more gripping adventures for us to savour. ( )

If I had to summarize my thoughts on the book in a sentence, it would be "an interesting concept, but awkwardly told".

To get the criticism out of the way: Morris is clumsy with exposition, which tends to come on thick and fast and in ways that don't feel natural. (For example, when Dakota is thinking of people to interview, she comes up with the names of teachers and explains to herself who they were. Aside from feeling unrealistic, it's a moot point because a few pages later the teachers introduce themselves for the podcast--which was a much more realistic bridge.) Unfortunately, that helps make her characters hard to connect with. Instead of growing and evolving naturally through the story, they change in fits and bursts--often as the result of exposition-heavy conversations--and as needed by the plot. I was also unimpressed with the ending. The slasher movie "return from the dead!" of the villain, the plot-convenient dementia of the mom...ugh.

But there was also good in this book, too. For one thing, I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised by the reveals surrounding Sean and Tiffany. Up till the end of the book, I also enjoyed the sections with the villain and thought they did a great job of developing the character while keeping some mystery to discover. And while this was a brief element of the book, I also liked that Morris touched on the darker side of these true crime investigations: the hurt of the people who are trying to piece their lives back together only to have them opened up for scrutiny again, the people who are suspected by the Internet and subjected to vigilante justice as a result, and how easily and unexpectedly something can go viral and change a lot of lives.

ShadowCast isn't what I hoped it would be. But there's a lot of promise here, and I'd like to see more of this author's work as her style matures and develops. ( )

I received an early reviewers copy of this book. It was definitely a page turner! I did see some of the twists coming, but it didn’t make the book any less interesting. Cold cases are fascinating and with the rise of podcasts about them, this book is very timely, even set in 2012. It was a fast and interesting read, I would definitely recommend it! The book could use another proofread as there are some typos/spelling/grammatical errors in the copy I had.