The Girl Before

This book was listed as very good condition. When it came it was filthy. I had to toss in the trash. I didn’t want to touch. I’ve lost my trust in this company.

I enjoyed the first 3/4 or so of the book. The author did a good job keeping you guessing and keeping the characters odd enough to make you wonder what was going on. And then suddenly, it was pretty terrible. It's like the author realized they had a deadline or only wanted the book to be so many pages, so they threw together the cheapest ending they thought would have shock value. The ending was so forced that I lost all interest and negated everything good to that point. There were some major holes that could have been patched had the author just added a little more earlier in the story. Suddenly there's a friendship that was not there throughout the entire book and was thrown in like an afterthought, yet it's the outcome/explanation and basis for the plot. And everything after the "big twist ending" was mediocre. In the final pages, there's an added extra "twist" of Jane's truth - and that just cheapened the book even more. It was even more forced than the first "twist" and I found myself thinking "honestly, who even cares?" I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. This thriller fell flat.