Book title: The girl from Widow Hills
Author: Megan Miranda
Pub Date: June 23, 2020
Genre: Mystery, Psychological Thriller
“I was the girl who survived. The girl who held on. The girl you prayed for, or at least pretended to pray for-thankful most of all that it wasn’t your own child lost down there, in the dark. And after: I was the miracle. The sensation. The story.”
The girl from Widow hills is a psychological thriller hold the thrill. For me, Arden’s story fell flat in so many ways that at several points during the book I had to almost talk myself into finishing it.
Arden was 6 years old when she was swept away by the flood waters while sleepwalking one night. They found her days later clinging to a storm drain, miraculously alive. Coming upon the 20 year reunion of her rescue she braces herself for the flood of media attention even though she has moved away and changed her name. As the 20 year reunion creeps closer she finds herself sleepwalking again, something that hasn’t happened since the incident all those years ago…Only this time when she is jarred awake by a ringing phone in the distance, she stumbles over a corpse. A mystery man….
I had high hopes for this book, but I felt that it was repetitive-how many times do you have to reiterate to the reader that she was sleepwalking and was swept away by the flood waters, how many times do we have to hear about the lone tiny shoe clinging to the storm drain, a clue that she must have been stuck in the drain system, how many times do we have to hear that her mother used the story of her survival for her own gain? I read these points more than several times throughout the book and was internally screaming each time I heard about them..AGAIN.
I did not connect to any of the characters in this book, they all felt void of personality to me, Arden was bland,kind of a shitty selfish friend, and the other characters in the book lacked back story and any kind of details that would emotionally connect the reader to them…none of them had any personality traits that stood out to me.
It’s been a few years since I have read a Megan Miranda book, which was why I was so excited to pick this one up. I enjoyed Miranda’s other books, and was hoping to enjoy this one just as much, but I didn’t.
HOWEVER, I will give it a solid 3 stars based on the fact that I did not predict the plot twist at the end AT ALL. I did not see that one coming. It happened so fast, within 4 pages the climax hit, missed, and was over.
If you are up for an atmospheric thriller with a good twist at the end, pick this one up, you wont see this twisty ending coming!
*Many thanks to Netgalley & publishers for my advanced copy of this book!*
The Literary Wife 