The Girls Before – Kate Alice Marshall

The Girls Before is nightmare fuel from the very first page (but even so, I’m grateful to my friends from Macmillan Australia for sending me a copy for review).

The story begins with a young woman locked and chained in a dark basement. Her captor has stopped come to feed (and abuse) her, so her only company in the dark is the ghosts of the girls who came before her- big V for Vendetta and The Handmaid’s Tale vibes.

Then the focus swings to Audrey, a woman who volunteers with Search and Rescue to cope with the guilt she feels over not searching for her teenage friend who went missing years ago. A girl from the school where Audrey works has gone missing in the present day, and the circumstances are eerily similar.

There are a lot of moving parts to The Girls Before – in addition to the missing women and the woman searching for them, there’s folklore about a local witch who takes vengeance on abusive men, a powerful local family hiding the secret, a love interest for Aubrey, and a pitbull named Barry who failed as a Search and Rescue dog because he prioritised searching for treats and belly rubs over searching for missing people.

So, with all those elements at play, it comes as no surprise that the climax is complex, and the ending leaves a few unanswered questions for the readers to ponder. It’s a haunting read in more ways than one. And (necessary spoiler for fellow dog lovers) I will warn you that Barry does get injured, but he’s okay by the epilogue.

Read The Girls Before on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)