ARC Review--The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall

 

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.

I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review.

Kate Alice Marshall is the master of twisty thrillers and I love them all! Whether she's writing for a young adult or adult audience she knows how to draw a reader in with enough clues and chills to leave you breathless by the revealing end! Her latest adult thriller, The Girls Before was a twisted tale with so many surprises that I could barely keep up but I was definitely staying up all night trying to finish it!

I will forewarn you that there are some flashbacks in this one, ones that bleed seamless into the story that sometimes you forget whether something is a memory or telling you what's going on present day. It's usually because the present moment stirs a memory and if you were reading somewhat distractedly like I tend to do, then it can be easy to miss whether the time is current or past. So please read responsibly, don't do what I do! Lol.

We get two points of view throughout in this one, one is Audrey, our mostly main character who is a teacher and parttime search and rescue volunteer. She works to help find people who go missing in the nearby forest. It all comes back to the time when her short-lived friendship with a girl named Janie ended with Janie running away. Or did she simply go missing?

There's quite a bit of reflection on her past friendship with Janie. It was an almost toxic relationship as Janie wasn't the best of people, but then when Audrey caught glimpses of her life, Janie didn't have the best life either. Most were just convinced that Janie ran away, as it was in her character to just disappear and then suddenly reappear. That the last time she disappeared when she was considered "too old" to be a missing teenager just made everyone forget her more easily.

When the latest missing ends up being a student who goes to the high school where Audrey works, she is more determined to find her as she is seeing parallels between this girl and her long ago friend, Janie. It's when clues start turning up on the property of the most prolific family in town, the Hills that things start getting a little more serious.

We also get points of view from a mysterious character. One who is being held captive somewhere and their kidnapper has either left them to die or has simply forgotten to feed her. It's been ages since she last saw him, and the little bit of food and water she has left is just about gone. No one likely knows where she is at and the clock on her life is ticking.

Time becomes a funny thing with thrillers. You might think you have a handle on when things are happening, but you really don't know until the author wants you to know. I thought I had a decent idea of what was going on, I was on the right track but did hit a few bumps along the way. It was still a shocking reveal indeed though!

The mystery does get resolved in this one. It was touch and go for awhile with the funny thing with time. Trying to put the pieces together was a bit nuts, like you were trying to fit them all together but didn't know what the final picture was meant to look like. And that, truly is the best part of a thriller! I love when a mystery starts coming together and can still take you by surprise. 

The Girls Before is definitely a mystery that you can easily get lost in. The mystery was just twisted enough to keep you engaged and needing to read more, needing to try to fit those puzzle pieces together. Will you see the picture before its formed? That depends on you, of course! If you're looking for the next best mystery to read on a dark and empty night, be sure to pick this one up! You won't be disappointed!

Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars

The Girls Before releases February 24, 2026