The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall
Publication Date: February 24th 2026 by Macmillan Audio
Pages: 320
Audio Book Length: 10hrs 8min
Narrator: Karissa Vacker & Ina Barrón
Source: Publisher
Rating: ★★★★
My
Thoughts:
Audrey is a school counselor and a search and rescue member
in her free time. She’s racked up several successes finding lost people but has
always been haunted by the disappearance of her ex-best friend, Janie. When
searching for a missing toddler, Audrey stumbles upon evidence of another teen
missing three months. However, she found the evidence while accidentally
searching on the land of a prominent family, the Hills, and they are intent on
keeping people off their property.
There’s another POV of “Stranger”, a woman held captive in a
basement running low on food and water. I was so worried about this woman!
The Girls Before was a mystery that alternated between meandering
and intense. Some of the reflections of the past, where Audrey recounts her toxic
relationship with Janie were slow but engrossing. The investigations in the
present were intense! I couldn’t believe that someone wouldn’t allow people on
their land when a toddler was missing! That was extremely suspicious to me, and
I would’ve thought it would be to the authorities, too. I was happy Audrey was
determined to find these girls no matter the surprising roadblocks in her path!
I really enjoyed this atmospheric, suspenseful mystery!
It was easy to get swept up in the audio version! I thought
Karissa Vacker, a favorite, and new-to-me Ina Barrón did an excellent job narrating
with emotion and urgency, bringing the story and characters to life!
4 Stars
Book Description:
From the bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods, No One Can Know, and A Killing Cold, a new novel about a search & rescue expert, a kidnapped woman, and the lost girls who haunt them both.
There is a girl in a basement.
The door has stopped opening.
The light is gone.
Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But if the door opens at last, will it mean salvation, or only the beginning of her fight to survive?
Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.
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