Readers Guide to The Missing Half with Spoilers

The amateur detective work begins!

Jenna was lying, but at that point Nic is more invested in investigating her sister’s case.

Nic and Jenna discover a connection: their sisters worked in different businesses at the same strip mall.

They try to contact Lauren, a former friend of Kasey’s and finally track her down at church. Lauren says that she quit the record store (where Kasey worked) and worked at a restaurant next door (where I think Jules bartended). She says her boss, Steve McLane, was not a good guy.

They track down McLane who says that Kasey was having a thing with an older guy.

They go back to talk to a frightened Lauren whose young daughter Beth Anne was given a message: stop talking about Kasey. But Lauren admits that Kasey had a secret affair with Brad, Nic’s boss and an old (and I mean 20+ years older) family friend.

Nic, weirded out by her sister’s affair with a guy she considered an uncle, is hesitant to go to the police. She insists that Brad has an alibi for Kasey’s disappearance.

Nic finds some clues

Nic decides to go to the family storage unit and look at Kasey’s old car. She finds some stuff in the car, including mix CDs, one of which features a lyric from on old Kinks song, “we are not two we are one.” She also finds personal items (like lip gloss) and a bunch of receipts. She shows everything to Jenna.

Jenna is busy with her cancer-stricken mother so Nick drives to a lake house owned by Brad and his wife Sandy. Nic learns that Sandy knew about the affair, and that Kasey was blackmailing Sandy in exchange for breaking it off. Kasey showed up at their family reunion to collect the money. 

Brad admits to being the one who passed the message to Lauren’s daughter. 

Nic gets busted

Driving home, Nick gets pulled over. When the officer checks her name and finds that her license was suspended and that she missed a court date, she gets arrested. 

Jenna picks Nic up from jail and says she needs to quit investigating and spend time with her mom.

Detective Aimes, the new detective assigned to Kasey’s case, offers to meet Nic. Aimes drops a bombshell: Jules’s hair was found in Kasey’s car.

Nic goes to talk to Jenna’s mom who warns Nic she’s a liar. Also, her cancer’s in remission.

So Nic sneaks into Jenna’s room. On Jenna’s (conveniently unlocked) computer she sees that Jules was texting an Amy Miller, asking about Jules’s “weird spell.  In a text, Amy refers to the fact that Jules was sexually assaulted by Steve McLane.

Nic is convinced that’s why Kasey started acting strange. It must have happened to her too. Kasey and Jenna were protecting her. Nic sees a text that Jenna has an emergency and is leaving work early that day. Uh-oh, that means that Jenna is coming home NOW.  Nic she finds a blue plastic box that holds a gun. Is Jenna going to shoot Steve?

Nic hides in the back of Jenna’s pickup truck under a tarp. Jenna takes an hours-long drive somewhere that Nic thinks must be McLane’s house.

A big revelation

Jules drives to a house that Nic assumes belongs to McLane. He’s not there, but someone else is!

It’s Kasey. Who is alive and well.

• As Nic spies on their conversation, she realizes that Kasey clearly has no idea who Jenna is. Jenna gets angry about this.
• Kasey asks how Jenna found her and Jenna says “I’m not here to answer your questions.” I wanted to know!
• Jenna, who has brought her gun to confront Kasey, accuses Kasey of killing Jules.
• Kasey says it’s “complicated.” Jenna thinks that Kasey hit Jules with her car and covered it up. Kasey denies it, but Jenna says she saw the car Kasey drove off in. She remembers the bumper sticker: “We are not two, we are one.”
• Jenna says she has PROOF: she saw the business card for the auto shop and talked to the guy there about repairs he did in 2012, when Jules went missing. It was a black Honda Civic and the shop had pictures of it.

Things Get Worse

• Jenna pulls her gun and tries to force Kasey to confess. 
• Nic decides Jenna is there to murder Kasey. She sneaks up behind Jenna.
• Kasey says it was an accident. 
• Kasey sees Nic. Nic decides she’s going to have to kill Jenna. What??
• Nic hits Jenna on the head with a hammer. Where does this hammer come from? The truck?
• Kasey tells Nic that Jenna is dead. Wow, okay. And Kasey is once again ready for body disposal.

Things Get Even Darker

• Nic wants to call the police. Well, she might have a point. 
• Kasey tells Nic that yes, she did cover up Jules’s death.
• They clean up the blood and move poor Jenna into her own truck.
• Nic asks Kasey what happened the night Jules died.
• Kasey said Jules was already dead and that reporting it would have “ruined everything.” 
• Kasey hid the body, staged the car, and then staged her own disappearance.  She decided two missing girls was a pattern. 

Nic loses it (and not because she just murdered someone!)

• Nic suddenly realizes that Kasey WILLINGLY abandoned her and starts crying. Why didn’t Kasey tell her the truth? 
• Nic also wonders why Kasey waited two weeks to disappear? Was she waiting for the Sandy money?
• Now (ugh) they have to talk about the affair. Kasey wanted to feel “mature.” Yikes!
• Nic brags about all the stuff they found out. She calls Kasey selfish. But Kasey has had enough.

FINALLY Kasey tells Nic the truth: Nic killed Jules.

2012: Kasey POV

• Kasey wakes up to her phone ringing. Nic says she needs help. She went to a bar, drove home and hit a tree.

• Kasey drives to the accident site. It doesn’t look like Nic hit a tree, so she uses her phone flashlight to figure out what Nic hit.
• She sees a body. She is about to call 911 but then hesitates. It was an accident. Jules’ car broke down and she started walking in the dark, wearing black clothing. Nic accidentally hit her.
• Nic has no memory of it. Kasey is the only one Nic can count on.  What to do????

Kasey begins her cover-up

• Kasey grabs Jules’ phone and puts it in her purse. She puts Jules’s body in (her?) trunk. She wonders if Jules’ hand moves? What???
• After that, Kasey started acting “weird.” Then she found a business card for the police in Nic’s stuff. She panicked and realized the best thing she could do is disappear to draw attention away from what she did.

Present: Nic

• Kasey and Nic drive to the same swamp where Kasey dumped Jules.
• Nic explains that the random business card was when she and some of her friends were at the bar when Jules worked. No big deal!
• Nic asks Kasey why her odometer says she drove a long way the night Jules died. She went to the stinky swamp! Which is where they are going now. Filled with rotting bodies… omg

THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE. 

Things Got Really Weird (for me!)

• Nic apologizes for ruining Kasey’s life. Kasey thanks Nic for saving her life.
• It’s time to dump poor Jenna’s body. They do it together.
• Nic wants them to live together again. Is Nic going to disappear too? I’m so confused.
• Kasey says no, Nic has to go home and pretend everything is normal. Then maybe they can be together. One day. Sure, Jan!
• They weigh Jenna’s body down with stones and put her in the swamp.
• Nic thinks that now Jenna and Jules can be together. What????

My Overall Take on The Missing Half

• At first it felt like an amateur detective procedural. Yes, that made the pace a bit slow, which some readers have pointed out. I didn’t mind it (except that I was listening, which made it seem even slower. This is a new theory I have, that audiobook listeners like faster paced books.)

• When Jenna started acting weird, my suspect radar went off.

• What I did not suspect? That Ashley and her co-author decided to give us a 2010s old school unreliable narrator story. Remember Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, The Woman in the Window?

• I felt The Missing Half had a lot of Ashley’s podcast personality. I know she’s an animal lover. Also, The Missing Half mentions how Kasey’s case got assigned to a larger police department than Jules’s did, making it less likely to be solved.

Why did the ending of The Missing Half bother me more than that of All Good People Here?

As in AGPH, justice is not done. And to make matters worse, it happens TWICE.

• Many readers didn’t find Nic a sympathetic character. It’s possible I missed something, because I thought she developed her alcohol abuse issue after Kasey disappeared. But maybe that was to trick us???

• Both Nic and Kasey have issues. Kasey is a protective (but I’d also argue resentful) older sister. Nic is stuck in her helpless younger sister mold. I KNOW this book is trying to have shock value, but deep down, I like justice. I was hoping for a moment of growth at the end from either Nic or Kasey.

• If growth is not possible, and the book had to go dark, I wished it would go REALLY dark and have Kasey eliminate Nic. In the swamp! If Nic can’t pay for her crimes, then it’s the only way Kasey can truly be free.

My Questions About The Missing Half

Like I said above, if I listen on audio and the book is twisty, I get CONFUSED. If you can answer any of these questions for me, do it in the comments! Thank you 🙂

1. How did Jenna know Kasey was responsible for her sister’s death?

Answered:

• On the night Jules disappeared, Jenna saw a car drive away from her sister’s broken down car.
• That car had the bumper sticker that said “We are not two, we are one.”
• Then she saw those lyrics written on one of Kasey’s mix CDs. And she also met with Detective Aimes and learned that Jules’s hair was in Kasey’s car. It’s a stretch, but okay.

2. How did Jenna find Kasey in Nashville?

I figured this out but it was also a BIG stretch. It was all from clues given to her by Nic. Kasey dreamed of living in Nashville, she’d worked at a record store. Yes, it was a bit hand-wavey unless I missed something! If any city has dozens of record stores, it’s probably Nashville.

3. Why didn’t Jenna go to the police instead of confronting Kasey?

She had plenty of evidence: the bumper sticker, the car repair photos. It was pretty compelling.

4. Why didn’t Kasey just ditch Jules’s body? And get help for Nic, who really needed it?

If she cared about Nic so much, letting her hit bottom was the best option. Now Nic has killed two people, so things are a lot worse.

5. Why was Nic so certain that Jenna was going to kill Kasey?

I don’t think Jenna was going to kill her. Jenna isn’t really a killer.

6. Are the police going to accept the fact that Jenna just mysteriously vanished?

Nic and Jenna have been talking about the case to EVERYONE: Brad, Sandy, Lauren, the police. 

7. Why didn’t the police find Jules’ blood in the trunk?

Did they just say they found hair, but not blood?