ARC Review: Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay

Parents Weekend
Author: Alex Finlay
Publication: Minotaur Books (May 6, 2025)

Description: From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

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.

My Thoughts: PARENTS WEEKEND isn't going quite as anyone expected at prestigious Santa Clara University. Just before it begins, a coed named Natasha Belov who was reported missing is found dead in one of the local sea caves. And some of the students at Campisi Hall believe they know what happened to her. 

Still, they are planning to join their parents for dinner on Friday night, but none of them show up. This leads to the FBI being called in. Special Agent Sarah Keller is the one who answers the call. She's temporarily assigned to the office since she, her husband, and her twins are spending some time in California with her husband's father who is dying.

With one of the missing being the son of an Assistant Secretary of State who is under death threats, the situation could be political. As the situation develops, we learn more about the sets of parents who all have conflicts of their own to deal with from unreliable exes to stalkers. And we learn more about the students who all have a variety of secrets of their own. 

This was an engaging story told from multiple viewpoints. I especially liked seeing Keller again. I enjoyed the suspense and the revelations about the students and their parents. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.