Wasting a clever set-up that feels like a cross between David Fincher's The Game and “the wrong man” motif that filled Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, after strapped-for-cash twenty-something makeup artist Jessica Farris participates in a paid ethics study intended for someone else, An Anonymous Girl takes roughly 150 pages to get going.
Graduating from creepy to only mildly thrilling, predictably Jessica discovers that the study was the bait needed to lure her into a diabolical shrink’s carnival funhouse of lies and manipulation where very little is what it seems.
Needless to say, it's a disappointing return to the genre for Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen following their smash hit The Wife Between Us. And while An Anonymous Girl has the makings of a much greater psychological mystery, the authors don't invest nearly as much thought into the heroine as the book's villain, which means that the reader is usually three steps ahead of Jessica each time she gets a (fairly obvious) ticket to the clue bus.
Sticking it out due to mild curiosity as to how everything would turn out as well a desire to review An Anonymous Girl since St. Martin's Press, Bookish First, and NetGalley were kind enough to send me an arc, despite an intriguing idea, in the end, I think most readers will be tempted to put it down in favor of picking a different thriller up.
Graduating from creepy to only mildly thrilling, predictably Jessica discovers that the study was the bait needed to lure her into a diabolical shrink’s carnival funhouse of lies and manipulation where very little is what it seems.
Needless to say, it's a disappointing return to the genre for Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen following their smash hit The Wife Between Us. And while An Anonymous Girl has the makings of a much greater psychological mystery, the authors don't invest nearly as much thought into the heroine as the book's villain, which means that the reader is usually three steps ahead of Jessica each time she gets a (fairly obvious) ticket to the clue bus.
Sticking it out due to mild curiosity as to how everything would turn out as well a desire to review An Anonymous Girl since St. Martin's Press, Bookish First, and NetGalley were kind enough to send me an arc, despite an intriguing idea, in the end, I think most readers will be tempted to put it down in favor of picking a different thriller up.