Blog Tour - Nine Missing Girls by Steena Holmes Review: 9 Dark & Twisty Short Stories

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Book Details

Title: Nine Missing Girls
Author: Steena Holmes
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Publisher: Joffe Books
Publication Date: 19th March 2026
Page Count: 261
Series: No

Blurb

Nine missing girls. Nine cases the world wants to forget. One detective who never will.

Each file is someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. And if Meri Amber can’t bring them home, she’ll make sure their stories end with justice.

As the FBI’s leading child abduction specialist, Meri has spent her career chasing the vanished – from Minnesota to Montana, from abandoned barns to dark cellars that still echo with screams. But every case cuts deeper than the last.

“I’m Detective Meri Amber. I’ve been searching for my sister for twenty years. Every missing girl is a mirror. Every scream behind a wall could be hers.

I’ll never stop looking. These are the stories of the girls I’ve found, the truths I’ve uncovered, and the cracks in my own past I can’t seem to seal.”

From the horrifying secrets of the House of Dolls, to a macabre twelfth birthday party, to the sinister truths buried in the Widow’s Barn: delve into nine intriguing mysteries which will chill you to the bone. 

About The Author

Steena Holmes

With 2 million copies of her titles sold world wide, Steena Holmes was named in the Top 20 Women Author to read in 2015 by Good Housekeeping. She continues to write books that deal with issues that touch parents heart, whether it is through her contemporary fiction or psychological suspense novels.

Find her at: Facebook | Instagram | X | Website

My Thoughts

Nine Missing Girls by Steena Holmes is a collection of short stories, each involving missing girls. It is a standalone book, but was written to properly introduce Detective Meri Amber, a character present in two of Holmes' previous books. These short stories are cases that Amber was involved in prior to her appearances in The Girls in the Basement and The Sister Under the Stairs.

Each of the stories tell a short tale of Amber and her team discovering what happened to the missing girls, but cleverly, most of them tie in to each other, and to the one case that has haunted Amber since she was 15 years old - her missing sister.

The format of the book wasn't something that I usually go for, but I enjoyed it overall. Plenty of eerie atmospheres and shady characters. The peripheral character depth was lacking due to the short form content, and some stories were definitely stronger than others, but it's a great choice if you want a easy-to-binge thriller.

If you enjoy:

  • Missing persons

  • Small town secrets

  • Dark pasts resurfacing

  • Unreliable characters

  • Psychological suspense

  • Hidden identities

  • …this is definitely one to add to your TBR.

My Rating

Follow The Tour

Huge thanks to Zooloos Book Tours and Joffe Books for having me on the tour and providing a review copy. Check out the tour poster below to follow the rest of the tour!


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