A solid thriller that will surely attract an eager fanbase. Addictive is an understatement when it comes to The Girl Before You.






She was his. 
She was perfect.
And then, she was gone.
 
Alice has always been haunted by the women from her husband’s past. As an MP and now a TV personality, George Bell’s reputation as a ladies’ man precedes him. But when Alice falls pregnant, her unease becomes an obsession.

And there’s one ex in particular she can’t get out of her head: a beautiful student George dated in his first year, who went missing before they finished university. Ruth.

When Alice sees a woman who looks just like Ruth, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to her disappearance than George has been telling her. But does she really want to know what her husband has been getting up to behind her back all these years?

An addictive and twisting psychological suspense that will have fans of Shari Lapena and Ruth Ware hooked. 




The Girl Before You, not to be confused with The Girl Before, was not at all what I expected it to be. At all. Which, to put it bluntly, is a brilliant thing to note. The Girl Before You was highly addictive, if not a little generic and slowly paced in terms of modern thrillers, and I found myself, too, haunted by the story at hand.

Despite its flaws: Nicola Rayner sets a darkened atmosphere beautifully, covering each plotline in the intensity necessary to thrillers and mysteries. At times, it felt a bit stilled in development and as if we were going around in circles via the narration. This could be less to do with the story and Rayner's prose, and more to do with the fact that I read far too many thrillers.

This doesn't make The Girl Before You bad, per se, but at times it makes the story feel all-too-familiar or like you've been circling the same thing for too long. I had some issues, from time to time, where I felt like the story was dragging on and losing a bit of steam. That being said, it's never enough to fully take away from the fact that The Girl Before You is a genuinely good thriller--it just may not be for everyone.

The Girl Before You has a lot going for it--great setting and mystery, characters that feel impossible to look away from or forget and to-the-point thrills and chills via psychological thriller traits and, at the end of the day, will satiate many's desire for a good mystery to breeze through. I can easily see this being portrayed on screen or opening new readers up to the genre.