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Missing Monday
Waking up on Tuesday and unable to remember the day before, Janna, desperately trying to recall the previous day's events, learns the truth from a mysterious woman, which leads her down a path of terror, turning every moment of every day into a living nightmare. Original.
- GenresHorrorScience Fiction
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 2004
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 19, 2012
I simply couldn't bring myself to finish this book. The story described in the cover blurb is just one small aspect of the story. There's a whole cast of characters I couldn't care less about. I wanted to read about a mysterious missing day, not a backpacker, scientist in hiding, and congressman.
July 15, 2025
I don't know what happened with this one -- or how it ever got published by a reputable imprint like Berkley. It reminded me of that movie "Gothika", in that it started pretty strong and really kept my attention, until the closing section went completely off the rails and ruined the story for me.
Costello seems to be so focused on building tension throughout the novel (often effectively, though perhaps overdoing it at times) that he forgets to also have a strong payoff at the end. As a result, this feels like a solid first draft that should have been edited 3-5 times before it saw the light of day. Even the grammar is off, with many words misspelled, quotation marks in places they shouldn't be (or not in places they should be), or the occasional confusing sentence. Honestly, whoever proofread this book should have been fired, because I can tell they just sped read this without paying much attention.
The characters all had potential, but with the book only being about 350 pages and regularly shifting between the perspective of four characters, none of them had enough space to come alive on the page. In that sense, there was both too much happening and not enough happening at the same time: lots of different characters doing different things, without the sense that all the details really mattered. Not enough action and tension in the third act, and a very contrived (and awkward) closing scene full of sudden B-movie dialogue.
Costello strikes me as a writer with tons of potential who needed a much better editor to guide him. I give Missing Monday two stars since the majority of the book kept my interest, up until the end.
Costello seems to be so focused on building tension throughout the novel (often effectively, though perhaps overdoing it at times) that he forgets to also have a strong payoff at the end. As a result, this feels like a solid first draft that should have been edited 3-5 times before it saw the light of day. Even the grammar is off, with many words misspelled, quotation marks in places they shouldn't be (or not in places they should be), or the occasional confusing sentence. Honestly, whoever proofread this book should have been fired, because I can tell they just sped read this without paying much attention.
The characters all had potential, but with the book only being about 350 pages and regularly shifting between the perspective of four characters, none of them had enough space to come alive on the page. In that sense, there was both too much happening and not enough happening at the same time: lots of different characters doing different things, without the sense that all the details really mattered. Not enough action and tension in the third act, and a very contrived (and awkward) closing scene full of sudden B-movie dialogue.
Costello strikes me as a writer with tons of potential who needed a much better editor to guide him. I give Missing Monday two stars since the majority of the book kept my interest, up until the end.
June 10, 2025
this book was truly terrible 😭 picked it up for about 50 cents at a goodwill a while ago and i guess i got what i paid for lol. FULL of typos, punctuation errors, and grammatical mistakes which alone made the book difficult to read without the completely nonsense story. i won’t even get into it all, but it’s funny that the back of the book makes it seem like janna is the main character when in fact they introduce a new main character every few chapters, and the tease of janna meeting “a stranger” who knows what’s going on doesn’t occur until the last few pages of the book. like a bad movie, i couldn’t put it down because i just needed to see where this was heading. i lost it at the president is an alien reveal in the epilogue 😭 i wish this was a movie so drew gooden or kurtis conner would commentate on it. to paraphrase one of kurtis’s commentating videos, the whole book can be summed up with “don’t worry—by the end, this question, and many others, will all go unanswered.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 19, 2024
Meh. This is not my genre at all but I found the book at a garage sale and decided to give it a go. It was an interesting premise but kind of out there for me. Maybe that’s what makes science fiction science fiction?!
October 23, 2014
Janna wakes up one tuesday morning with no recollection of the day before. Caryn's husband has been killed because the Pushers wanted the information that was so precious to them. Mark is in another country running away from them. Frank is a congressman...It sounds like an awesome thrill ride. And it sorta is.
August 31, 2008
it's an ok story. a woman cannot remember her monday at all. she is really creeped out and disoriented by it. meanwhile some people are on the run trying to stay alive...and somehow it's all connected.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews