Parents Weekend

Parents Weekend centres around five university students who were supposed to meet their parents for a parents weekend dinner but the quintet suddenly vanish. FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller is brought in to piece together what happened and to find Libby, Stella, Felix, Mark and Blaine.

This book grabbed me from the beginning. There are a LOT of characters and it took me a bit to remember who was who, but I enjoyed the alternating perspectives - especially how the story is mainly told from the POVs of the parents of the missing students. Through the changing POVs, readers will be pulled into the lives, lies and secrets of the Roosevelt, Maldonado, Akana, Wong, Goffman (and Keller) families. 

The story goes along at a good pace with chapter endings to entice readers to keep reading. Agent Keller was a standout character (and her husband was my fav), but where the story felt a bit weak was in the actual mystery. I was hoping for a more layered story. Instead, it felt a bit predictable when I was really hoping for one final twist to reveal a different culprit. 

Overall, I enjoyed this story's unputdownable first half and meeting Agent Keller who I hear is in two of Finlay's earlier books. I am eager to now read Every Last Fear and The Night Shift). Look for this book in stores in early May 2025!

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Minotaur Books for the complimentary digital advanced copy of this book which was provided in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3.75 stars

Author: Alex Finlay

Genre: Suspense

Type and Source: ebook from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Minotaur Books (SMP)

First Published: May 6, 2025

Read: March 31 - April 5, 2025

Book Description from GoodReads: In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.