The Forgotten Girl

[Angie]

I'm quite surprised at how much of The Forgotten Girl's mystery I solved based on the blurb and the prologue. That is not good. While I did already have theories going into the main story, I didn't expect them to be correct. I figured this was a book written by someone who's written several thrillers before, so there's got to be some kind of shocking twist that I'd never see coming. Well, no. I didn't figure out all of the details, of course, but when it came to who was connected to who? That was way too easy. Although I still can't figure out how the title fits into anything, since there is no girl that was forgotten. Oh well.

The Forgotten Girl starts off with Jason's long lost sister finally returning home. It's been five years since anyone has heard from her, but she appears to be sober and getting her life together. She's there to drop off her daughter, before going off to continue making amends for wrongs she's done in the past. She asks her brother to give her 48 hours to do what she needs to do, and he agrees. Of course, she disappears. He suspects she's on a bender, or in some other trouble, especially when a twenty-seven year old missing person case is reopened at the same time. Jason's best friend disappeared on the night of their high school graduation. Everyone suspected he just got sick of small town life and left, but no no one knew for sure what happened to him until now.

There's one thing that I hate about books that have some kind of mystery in them: red herrings that try too hard to be red herrings. The prologue is that exactly, so for a brief moment I fell for it, but then decided that maybe someone else was involved rather than who they were trying to make it out to be. Then Jason's sister shows up, and I fit her into place, although I wasn't sure of her exact involvement. Then there were two more characters that I connected to each other, and was right about that, although I actually had to wait for the truth to come out to find out why they were connected. It was all just too obvious! I was into the story until I realized that all of my guessing was correct, and then when all of the truths came out I just got irritated. Authors seriously need to stop using that as a plot device! There are other ways to make a male character "evil."

The characters of The Forgotten Girl just don't make any sense. There are two teenagers who talk like forty year olds trying to talk like teenagers. Then everyone is constantly saying "You don't know because you don't have kids." or "As a parent..." We get it! You're parents, they're not! No one cares when there's a murder involved! A dead person is a dead person! And then when everything comes out into the open, the general response is "Well, it's been so long, I guess it's okay to tell the police now." What?! Does that even make sense?! Like, oh, all of these horrible things happened in the past, so they don't matter anymore even though someone is dead and has been dead for thirty years...

The Forgotten Girl started off promising, but quickly went downhill as all of the mystery pieces started to get fit together. I wanted to be surprised by something! Instead, the "twist" that was suppose to be shocking and emotional, just frustrated me. And the character's responses to everything that happened were just dumb. I don't believe for one second that one character in particular knew something and decided not to tell the police. The rest of them, yeah, I can understand them staying silent. But not that one! There is no way! It seemed done for just a dramatic ending, but really didn't work.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.