Girl Unknown

Girl Unknown A Novel by Karen Perry published by Henry Holt & Company. An arc of this novel was given to me through Netgalley for my honest review thank you to all parties for the opportunity. It is very unique in a number of ways. The first is that Karen Perry is actually a pen name for two writers collaborating on this book. This is the first book, to the best of my knowledge, that I've read penned by two authors and it definitely worked here, you could not tell who wrote which part of the story and it made it easy to read and a real page turner.
I have to be honest when I picked this up I wasn't sure what to expect. I loved the way the authors split the chapters up between Caroline and David I feel both perspectives help to round out the story giving the reader an insight to what is going on. What I like to call Zoe Barry is a bombshell on a family who was coasting through life happily. Everything is fine until “She” arrives, and while at first, I felt horrible for her, toward the end chapters I was convinced she needed more help than anyone can give her. Is she his daughter, is she a stranger or is she just the killer? As far as books go I found this nicely paced with characters well-crafted and an ending that you will either see coming a mile away or not figure it out until the last page. 4 Unbelievable Unknown Stars from me.

Girl Unknown is the first thriller that I've read this year, and I have to say that it was a nice change of pace. Although this book wasn't everything I wanted it to be, there was a lot to love. Imagine a family that is trying their best to knit their lives back together, when suddenly a bomb is dropped in their midst. A previously unknown person, an unexpected daughter, falls right into the middle of their rocky relationships. That's the premise behind Girl Unknown. How do you deal with someone who might not be exactly who they say they are?

The fact of the matter is that this book is not what I was expecting, because I was expecting more of the thriller aspect and less of the familial drama side of things. That being said, Girl Unknown is going to greatly appeal to any reader who is very into character personalities and drama that you can cut with a knife. Karen Perry uses most of this book to show us the character perspective of what Zoe is to each of them. As the story unfolds, we find out more and more about how Zoe is definitely not what she seems to be, and see why the choices that David and Caroline make are really pushing things towards their climax. If we're talking intense studies on character psyches, this book has that in droves. What it lacks though, because of this, is real forward movement.

See, the book spends so much time dealing with the slow decline of David and Caroline's relationship and Zoe's manipulation of them, that it doesn't have a lot of time to spend on the thriller portion of the story. This felt like a read that was very easy to anticipate. The plot was well formed, but it was also easy to see where Zoe's story was going next. As such, there was never that surprise or shock that usually comes along with books like this. It was interesting, well-written, and had great characters. It just didn't have any oomph to it.

So, that's why I'm on the fence about this book. Technically, it's fairly perfect. It's not a bad read, by any means, and actually flies by pretty quickly. It just didn't catch me up in its web like I expected it to. I wanted more punch, and more pizzazz. If you appreciate thrillers that are more formulaic, and take a deep dive into the the inner thoughts of the characters, you'll definitely love Girl Unknown.