
Author: Pip Drysdale
Published by: Simon & Schuster on May 2, 2023
Genres: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 368
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Simon & Schuster Canada
Book Rating: 8.5/10
For fans of The Perfect Girlfriend, The Flight Attendant, and Promising Young Woman, a compulsively readable suspense novel about a woman who will stop at nothing to expose the dark secrets of a powerful man—with shocking results.
A bad day at work. A drunken night. A rogue Instagram follow. That’s all it takes to ruin a life…but whose life will be ruined?
When Billie wakes up in a strange guy’s bed, her first thought What happened last night? She can’t even remember meeting him. And how the hell did she get to Coney Island?
Then reality bites and the memories flood in—the reason she was in that bar drinking to start with was because today she’s going to get fired. Yesterday, her law firm lost a high-profile assault Samuel Grange v Jane Delaney. And it looked like it was her fault.
It wasn’t.
Yet now Samuel Grange is free to drive off into the sunset in his Porsche and do it all again to another woman. And all Billie can think What about the next girl? And the one after that?
But there is nothing she can do to stop him.
Unless…She could expose the truth about him on her own. Then everyone would see what he is really like. She could make sure he’ll never be able to do it again.
The problem is, the only way to protect the next girl is to become the next girl.
And, well, that could be a little risky…even deadly.
Review:
Dark, tight, and complex!
The Next Girl is an intense, edgy thriller that takes you into the life of Billie Spencer-Tate, a young paralegal with a knack for losing her day job, who after losing her mother to suicide due to an online troll, spends the majority of her time and effort using her high-tech knowledge and social media skills to hunt down, identify, select, and hand out her own style of justice to those men who abuse, prey, and gaslight women, with her latest target being the arrogant, despicable, dangerous Dr. Samuel Grange who she is determined to expose.
The prose is taut and gritty. The characters are consumed, unpredictable, and secretive. And the plot builds quickly as it twists, turns, shocks, surprises, and unravels all the personalities, behaviours, relationships, and motivations within it.
Overall, The Next Girl, at its core, is a novel about secrets, manipulation, friendship, coercion, obsession, control, cunning behaviour, tragedy, violence, and vengeance. It’s a highly suspenseful, exceptionally clever tale by Drysdale that highlights everything is not always as it appears and is definitely one of the most gripping page-turners I’ve been lucky enough to read this year.
This novel is available in paperback now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.