Cover Image: Before You Knew My Name

Before You Knew My Name

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Member Reviews

I must firstly apologise for the amount of time it has taken me to provide a review of this book, my health was rather bad for quite some time, something that had me in hospital on numerous occasions and simply didnt leave me with the time I once had to do what I love most.

Unfortunately that does mean I have missed the archive date for many of these books, so It would feel unjust throwing any review together without being able to pay attention to each novel properly.

However, I am now back to reading as before and look forward to sharing my honest reviews as always going forward. I thank you f0r the patience and understanding throughout x

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A book that is full of emotions. It is sad and heartbreaking but also there is hope.
Words just flow with ease off the page which I just loved.
Thank you to both NetGalley and publishers for gifting me a book

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Insightful, heart breaking and wonderfully written. Alice and Ruby's stories are both tragically and beautifully intertwined. I'm not sure I can put in to words what this story meant to me; it made me feel the whole spectrum of emotion, asked questions I've longed to get answers to and hammered home the true beauty of human connection. It's not a spoiler, as I won't go into specifics, but i loved the section written about what could/would have been. This story will definitely stay with me for a very long time.

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i requested this months and months ago and then kind of wrote it off thinking it would just be a generic crime book which i have to really be in the mood for. but it was so so much more!! it's told by two perspectives, alice who is murdered not long after she arrives in nyc, and ruby, an australian woman who has also recently moved to the city and who comes across alice's body. it was a really interesting look at true crime culture and about the grief and aftershocks of male violence. i really loved the way it was written. 5/5

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This is a powerful read. It deals with some very serious themes, and it can be triggering. There were passages that made me angry and sick to my stomach, but it is a compulsive read and I had to know what happened next.
Alice is an 18 year old girl who runs from her small town to the Big Apple with only 600$ in her pocket and a stolen camera. Ruby, is a 36 year old woman who runs from her own town in Australia to NY as well. Their paths cross, but not before one of them is dead, murdered to be more exact. Ruby discovers Alice's body one early morning and she cannot stop thinking about the young Jane Doe. Alice cannot cross over and needs to make sure her murdered and rapist is punished. The story is uniquely told from two points of view. A lost 36 years old who needs to restart her life, and a dead girl who needs peace.
This book is very well written and the character development is fantastic. I truly hated one character and my emotions were all over the place at points.

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A familiar scene to any viewers of New York City crime dramas like Law & Order, Blue Bloods, or Castle: a young woman’s body is found by a jogger or dog walker, then the central cops swoop in and we follow them on the path to whodunnit. Witness and victim are instigators, temporary in the overall tale.

In Bublitz’s stunning debut, she deftly upturns and plays with those familiar ‘pretty dead girl’ tropes.

Bublitz delivers a beguiling, astonishing tale that deep dives into the lives and viewpoints of two women who headed to New York trying to forget the past and forge a new future. Victim and witness; this time it’s the cops who are bit players. There’s an enchanting warmth to this tale despite the horrifying deed(s).

A rich characterisation of female lives and fears and desires that's beautifully written, Before You Knew My Name is a sublime novel – it’s easy to see why it’s already won and been shortlisted for several major awards in the UK, NZ, and Australia before its US release. A triumph

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‘Before you knew my name’ is far more than a mystery or a story about the death of a young woman. I found this book to be moving and haunting and something that I couldn’t help but think about long after I had finished it.
A young girl’s body is found by a jogger in New York City and in this awful chance encounter the two women’s stories become intertwined. The girl’s death is being investigated by the police and her identity is still unknown but the jogger, Ruby, can't let it go and wants to know what happened to this young girl. Bublitz introduces the reader to Alice, the eighteen year old with dreams of starting over in New York city and so we get this strange parallel of narratives as their stories develop.
I really enjoyed this story and appreciated the closure we get within the mystery element of the book. However for me the part that really gripped me was the poignancy that develops across the story, in that unfortunately these terrible events could happen to any woman, anywhere. This brutal truth is what bonds two strangers in this book kept me captivated and makes this a strong recommended read for me.

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I don’t know how to describe my feelings about this story after finishing it. It’s so heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Full of sad moments but full of hope and love as well. Beautiful written and a more interesting cover that really catches my attention in the first place.
I would recommend it to anyone and everyone that just want to get lost in a wonderful story.

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A beautifully written book, was surprised learning this is a debut novel! Poignant , sad but hopeful too! One that’ll sit with you for a while. Definitely recommend!

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This might genuinely be one of the most hauntingly beautiful and heart-wrenching mystery books I've ever read.

"Life, she understands in this moment, has stopped happening to her. She has stood in the middle of too many summers and winters, too many dance floors and other people's parties, and simply woken up the next day older than before. For so long, nothing has changed."

This book is the story of two people bound by a single tragedy. Alice Lee has fled her Wisconsin lifestyle for New York following her lover finding out she wasn't old enough for their relationship. Freshly 18, Alice felt like she needed to go. The book begins with Alice informing the reader she is going to die. Ruby Jones is a 30 something Australian woman whose lover is about to get married. Their toxic relationship is killing Ruby slowly and on a whim she decides to move across the world to New York, falling into depressive episodes and hoping the distance will make her miss Ash less and less. Ruby feels although life is happening without her, until she finds a dead body in the park, floating in the water in the middle of a storm. The mysterious Jane Doe, with no identity, no friends and nothing to tether her to the life she must have lived for 18 years. Ruby can't get the girl out of her head, who is the girl? How did she end up here? And of course, we know it's Alice. Ruby finds herself in a PTSD group where we're introduced to a host of quirky characters and "The Death Club", made up of three other people impacted by death in different ways.

This story is haunting. Kind of literally with Alice being somewhat tethered to Ruby in death, but we see them both before the incident and after, coming to terms with their new lives and finding their place in this new world. We see Alice meet Noah, an older man with more money he can use and an estranged daughter that Alice reminds him of and see Alice apply to photography school. We see Ruby work through her mindless drinking and develop a form of routine. This book isn't particularly fast-paced and in fact, I found myself wondering how this was a mystery when we knew Alice was going to die from the beginning. However, I naively assumed it would be suicide but as the book goes on, we see Alice become more hopeful and things go so right for her, that conclusion turns out to be wrong. That's where the mystery comes in.

I liked seeing how the characters developed and interacted with one another throughout this book, their interactions felt very natural, down to the awkward police officer offering Ruby comfort. My heart bled for Noah losing Alice, and when Alice's friend Tammi finds out too. It's all just harrowing and sad and beautifully written. I will be looking for more from this author in the future. The ending left me aching, like look at this line:

"For the first time, I understand it's not only the dead who have lives they don't get to live out. The people left behind have as many versions of themselves unexplored, as many possible paths that close off. Some versions are better, and some, no doubt, are worse."

HOW COULD IT NOT.

This book was great. Nothing but good things.

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Before You Knew My Name is a heart-breaking, powerful, moving and beautiful read that gets you thinking. It's utterly original and one that you won't stop reading until you've finished.

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What a beautiful novel! I was blown away by this and was totally taken by surprise. So much suspense and tension with complex characters. Such a powerful read.

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Unfortunately this was not for me. While the writing was suspenseful and kept me intrigued, I often felt confused as to who the narrative was referring to, and the ending in my opinion fell a little flat.

The characters and their arc was interesting and they were wonderfully written. I did feel invested in what was to happen, even if at times I was confused. I will be picking up more by the author in the future.

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There has been a lot written recently about crime fiction alleged exploitation of violence for entertainment, but crime writers insist, in my view correctly, that most are using crime as a vehicle to look at societal issues and tell the victim's story. This would be a good book to give to someone who 'assumes' all crime novels are the same, and merely care about the solution. Instead, Bublitz has taken a multi layered look at violence against women that shows real sympathy for her characters.

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Thank you to Netgalley, Little, Brown Book UK and Jacqueline Bublitz for this e-copy in return for my honest review. Unlike anything that I've read before, this book is simply stunning. Beautifully written and thought provoking, Alice and Ruby's story will stay with me for a long time.

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Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz, is is the first book I have read from this author and it did not disappoint I was hooked within the first few chapters and I loved it! and I can say it was one of the best books I have read for a while.
Jacqueline has beautifully written a book about a relationship between to women, called Ruby and Alice who are both in New York on the same day. They have never met but whose lives become together, However, they are both running away from something, wanting a fresh start in a new place where no one knows them.
Their lives change when Ruby finds Alice's body in the river in New York.

How did Alice get there? and who is she?

This book was fast paced with lots of twists and turns throughout that will play with your emotions.

I highly recommend this book and looking forward to read more from Jacqueline in the future.

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Netgalley for my advanced copy of this book to read

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Alice, an 18 year old girl whose single mother killed herself a few years ago, is lost and vulnerable, easily falling into an exploitative relationship with an older teacher. She decides to escape to New York and make a new life for herself, but although at first things go well at first, she is soon found murdered and her body abandoned by the river in a park, where she is discovered by Ruby, who is in her thirties and is also looking for a new start. Ruby has been having a pointless affair with a work colleague in Australia who is engaged to be married, but she remains alone and unfulfilled. After finding Alice’s body, which remains unidentified, she determines to find out who she is and what happened to her, and with the help of Alice from beyond the grave she eventually finds a new purpose and begins to put her life together again. I enjoyed the first half of the book as Alice starts to feel at home in New York after years of grief and neglect, and was saddened by her pitiful end and wanted to know how she met her end, but the story then moves towards Ruby and her attemts to come to terms with the trauma of finding the body and became more a philosophical study of the ways men harm women and loss affects individuals, and I became rather disconnected from it.

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Sometime you know you have read something that is important…that is how I feel about this book.

Such a unique concept, to narrate the book as the character who we already know is dead. Alice Lee has a traumatic childhood and we follow her story as she turns 18 and moves to New York where she dies.

Her body is found by Ruby who arrived in New York on the same day as Alice. As Ruby struggles to come to terms with her trauma and learns more about the body she discovers, we also learn more about both Alice and Ruby.

This book is a good novel but has so many important messages about what it means to be a woman in today’s society. How powerless we can be and how ingrained in society this is. It is hard to read but so powerful and true.

I loved the death club and all it’s members. I loved Noah and his dog. Beautiful characters in a heart breaking tale.

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This was a really thought provoking read.
As soon as I read that it was set in New York, one of my favourite places in the world, I was immediately on board and intrigued to read more.
This wasn't like anything I'd read before and I enjoyed the unique way in which the story was told.
It's not your usual murder mystery but it covered a lot of great and important topics.
It was a little slow paced but I didn't mind that too much.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Stunningly beautiful book, unlike anything I've read before. Hopeful, heart breaking, thought provoking, sensitive and wise. One for the bookshelf to read again and again.

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