Book Review
Title: Girl Forgotten by April Henry
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 3.5 Stars
From the synopsis alone, this gave me similar vibes to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder so I was excited to see what April Henry could do in less than 300 pages. I did read Playing With Fire and was surprised by what the author delivered in so few pages and I hope she can do it again. The opening of Girl Forgotten introduces us to Piper Gray who is living with her father and step-mother and starting a new school, we don’t know what happened to her mother but I believe that she is dead. While listening to her favourite podcast in the local cemetery she learns about Layla Trello, a 17 year old who disappeared and ended up murdered and no one was ever caught. Honestly, given how much I loved A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder this is hitting all the same vibes so far and I can’t wait to see what Henry does with it.
Piper is a massive fan of true crime and decides after her father buys her a new phone and laptop to do a podcast investigating Layla’s murder for her senior project. I really sympathise with Piper of starting a new school and not knowing anyone as I went through that exact situation myself. Much like Pip for A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Piper begins poking around in things that she shouldn’t and begins getting threats. While these threats let her know she is on the right track to finding out what really happened to Layla, they also tell her that the killer is still around and the stakes are high as her own life could be on the line. One thing that I struggled with was the whole book takes place over less than 24 hours so when Piper’s podcasts begins getting popular and everyone suddenly wants to be her friend didn’t really make sense. At least with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Pip went through a lot of backlash and sacrifices to bring the mystery full circle and she ended up sacrificing a lot to get there.
The small amount of romance between Piper and Jonas was good as it didn’t overwhelm the mystery but provided some more light-hearted moments which were needed. I also really liked how Jonas was the tech guy helping Piper with the more technical aspects of creating and editing a podcast. The reveal of the killer was huge surprise to me as they weren’t on my radar at all and those sorts of reveals is something that Henry does really well. My biggest issue was the book wasn’t long enough for me, in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder there is main mystery that continues over three books with other reveals and side mysteries along the way, even if Henry didn’t want to make this mystery a series I felt it definitely deserves at least another 100 pages to flesh things out a bit more and make the stakes a bit more but overall, it was a good read and I will definitely be picking up more from the author in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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