From bestselling authors Alexandra Sokoloff and Craig Robertson, The Grapevine is a thrilling mystery featuring a quirky and relentless female protagonist, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.
How far would you go to find your missing child?
Lou Gomersall’s going as far as it takes. And there’s no turning back.
When her nineteen-year-old daughter Abby disappears, Lou embarks on a reckless road trip in the family RV, scouring the highways and back roads of California. Through desert and mountains, into the woods, and to the ocean’s edge.
A year later, the police don’t believe Lou’s theory that four other missing young women have been taken by the same elusive predator. So, when another college sophomore vanishes, Lou jumps on the fresh trail, enlisting millennial #vanlifers, Gen Z entrepreneurs, boomer RVers, homeless sages, truck stop prostitutes and everyone in between in her do-or-die mission to rescue Abby …
Or kill the man who took her.
The Grapevine by Alexandra Sokoloff & Craig Robertson was published on 23 June 2026 by Blackstone. My thanks to the authors who sent my copy for review.
Husband and wife writing duo Sokoloff and Robertson are well respected and best selling authors in their own right. I've often wondered if they would ever collaborate on a book, and they have, and here it is. It's an absolute cracker too, I read this whilst on holiday in Greece an was absolutely enthralled by it throughout.
For me, the fact that the story is driven by a mother's determination makes this so compelling. Tense, emotional and utterly addictive, I was grabbed from the first chapter.
Lou Gomersall has spent a year searching for her missing daughter, Abby. While everyone around her seems ready to accept defeat, Lou simply keeps going. Travelling across California in an RV, following every lead and chasing every possibility, she is a woman fuelled by hope, grief and sheer stubbornness. I loved her from the very start.
Lou is not always easy to like, and for me, that is exactly what makes her such a fascinating character. Her desperation pushes her into risky situations and she makes some shady decisions, but every action feels completely real. I found myself urging her on, willing her to find the answers that so many others had given up searching for.
The setting is brilliantly used. The highways, campgrounds and forgotten corners of California become characters in their own right. The community of vanlifers, travellers and drifters adds colour and depth to the story. I almost felt a sense of movement throughout the novel, as though we are sitting in the passenger seat, travelling alongside her.
The plotting is superb. The mystery unfolds at exactly the right pace, with clues scattered carefully enough to keep the reader guessing.
What impressed me most was the emotion at the centre of the story. Underneath the suspense and danger there is a powerful exploration of loss, hope and the extraordinary lengths a parent will go to for their child. It gives the novel real depth and makes Lou's journey impossible to forget.
The Grapevine is a thrilling start to what promises to be an outstanding series. Alexandra Sokoloff and Craig Robertson have created a memorable heroine and a story packed with tension, emotion and surprises. I raced through it and was genuinely disappointed when I reached the final page.
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys intelligent, character-driven thrillers with a huge heart and plenty of twists along the way.
Alexandra Sokoloff is a native Californian who sold original scripts and wrote novel
adaptations for major Hollywood studios before becoming the award-winning author of fourteen novels.
Craig Robertson spent twenty years as a journalist, covering some of the biggest stories across the globe. His eleven crime novels, mostly set in his native Scotland, have been shortlisted for all the UK's major awards.
They met in the US, now live in Scotland, and despite writing two books together and miraculously still married.
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