Review: 'Chloe Cates Is Missing' by Mandy McHugh

What happens is a social media starlet goes missing? A stressful 24hrs, I can tell you! Chloe Cates Is Missing promises everything from past crimes to present crimes, glitz and glam as well as blood, and a major serving of tension. I'm glad to say McHugh delivers on almost all of those promises in this tightly-paced thriller. Thanks to Penzler Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 1/18/2022
Publisher: Penzler Publishers; Scarlet

The disappearance of a young internet celebrity ignites a firestorm of speculation on social media, and to find her a detective will have to extinguish the blaze.

Chloe Cates is missing. The 13-year-old star of the hit YouTube series, “CC and Me,” has disappeared, and nobody knows where she’s gone — least of all ruthless momager Jennifer Scarborough, who has spent much of her daughter’s young life crafting a child celebrity persona that is finally beginning to pay off. And in Chloe’s absence, the faux-fairytale world that supported that persona begins to fracture, revealing secrets capable of reducing the highly-dysfunctional Scarborough family to rubble.

Anxious to find her daughter and preserve the life she’s worked so hard to build, Jennifer turns to social media for help, but the hearsay, false claims, and salacious suspicions only multiply. As the search becomes as sensational as Chloe’s series, Missing Persons detective Emilina Stone steps in, only to realize she has a connection to this case herself. Will she be able to stay objective and cut through the rumors to find the truth before it’s too late?

Told from multiple points of view including Jennifer, Emilina, and pages from Chloe’s lost diary, Chloe Cates Is Missing is a suspenseful novel of a child pushed to the brink, and of the troubled family that desperately needs her back. 

Black Mirror has an episode called 'Nosedive' in which social media leads to a woman's breakdown. It is no secret that social media and the constant attention it requires is having a very negative impact on people in general, not just teens. The need to perform, to be perfect, to be someone you're not, has consequences and it is a perfect cesspit for psychological thrillers to dive into. The danger is that it feels a little too cliché, a little too on the nose. It requires some deftness to really handle it properly, and Chloe Cates Is Missing tries to do so. While I don't think the novel is quite as smooth as it could be, McHugh makes it very clear where she stands on the 'should you put your entire child's life online'-debate. (I'm with her on the 'Please no!' side btw!) It's another great example of how thrillers and suspense novels are a great way to think about social issues. The genre is capable of holding up a mirror to society in the way many others cannot and reveal its flaws.

Chloe Cates is missing. But Chloe Cates doesn't exist. She is the online persona of Abby Scarborough, a 13-year old girl who is the star of her mother's blog and has fans across America. But now that she has disappeared, cracks are appearing in the picture-perfect fairy tale her mother has tried to spin online. The tighter she tries to hold onto the reins, the more her control slips. It doesn't help that she shares a difficult history with the main detective in the case. Chloe Cates Is Missing is full of twists and turns, reveals, and flashbacks, to the point that I found it a little impossible to accept that the novel takes place in a single day. The madness (positive!) of the plot is grounded by the characterization of one character in particular, namely detective Emilina Stone. Far from perfect, she has a good heart and is constantly looking for ways to atone and be better. She is determined, but also empathetic.  Around her swirl a set of characters that are a little too thinly drawn. Abby is very "young" and precocious, her mother Jennifer is very shrewd and cool, her father Jackson is bumbling yet also hot. 

This is Mandy McHugh's first novel and I see a whole lot of potential here! There are some lovely twists and the characterisation of Emilina is great. You get a real sense of who she is, her fears, her strength but also her weaknesses. I'd love to see her return in future books by McHugh, because I'm kind of invested now. While Chloe Cates has its strengths, not everything works evenly well. Like I said above, it's a bit too much plot for a 24-hour timeline. We also get some chapters which are taken from Abby's journal and while it adds an extra layer, the teen-voice of those passages doesn't jell well with the darker tone of the rest of the novel. While it is intended to add, it kind of undercuts the tension with its Addison Rae references and repeated OMGs. 

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

Chloe Cates is Missing is an entertaining rollercoaster of a thriller. While not all elements work equally well, I'll definitely keep an eye out for more of Mandy McHugh.