Holly (Holly Gibney, #3) in On The Same Page

Apr 06, 2025 Wyetha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2025-good-reads-challenge

4.25 ⭐

I’m still not sure how I feel about this story, but I’m giving it 4.25 ⭐ stars because I found it both good and disturbing.

Our favorite character in King's books, Holly Gibney, is tasked with finding a missing girl, Bonnie Dahl, who was last seen on her bike leaving her job. The girl’s mother (Penny) is frantic because while the police are involved, they haven’t made any headway in finding her.

Holly accepts this task and gets to the business of finding out what happened by retracing Bonni 4.25 ⭐

I’m still not sure how I feel about this story, but I’m giving it 4.25 ⭐ stars because I found it both good and disturbing.

Our favorite character in King's books, Holly Gibney, is tasked with finding a missing girl, Bonnie Dahl, who was last seen on her bike leaving her job. The girl’s mother (Penny) is frantic because while the police are involved, they haven’t made any headway in finding her.

Holly accepts this task and gets to the business of finding out what happened by retracing Bonnie's steps, speaking with her coworkers and friends, and visiting the last place she was seen. Holly is following every lead and leaving no stone unturned.

My very first thought (after about 100 pages) was “do these old people (the Harris’s) think they can stay young by eating people’s organs. (WTF) Now, once I got over my initial shock at the premise (which is twisted), I could begin to delve into the actual mystery.

While Holly is searching for the missing girl, she’s also dealing with the death of her mother. Her mother has died of COVID and didn’t believe in vaccines and swore she just had a bad flu, even on her deathbed. Holly also discovers her mother was hiding another big secret from her, and now she is trying to wade through all of this while navigating this case. Throughout the story, Holly’s relationship with her mother haunted her, as well as her past cases. She determined not to let these things hinder her current work.

As Holly digs deeper into the case, she finds that several other people have gone missing, and their connection to a certain elderly couple, the Harrises, seems suspicious.

An unassuming couple, the Harrises were both retired professors; however, the husband, Rodney, was bat-shit-crazy (before the dementia), and towards the end of his school tenure, the cracks began to show. His wife Emily was the one holding everything together and is probably the most devious character I’ve seen in a while.

In my humble opinion, Holly was truly badass, even with all her quirks. I love this character. That hyper-focus on details. She always seemed right on the tip of the case, and that’s when Holly’s partners, Pete, Jerome, and his sister Barbara, would come into play. The outcome isn’t pretty, and I knew Holly wouldn’t meet her fate in this story, but I was on the edge of my seat towards the last 30% of this title.

This book took me a long time to read (longer than most), and I felt a sense of dread for the victims, and some anxiety about any new victim. I was rooting for some characters while wishing others an early demise, because sometimes characters in a story need to get what’s coming to them. ...more

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