Member Review
Review by
Booklover 4, Reviewer
Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for this arc. I adored Unger's recent novel, Confessions on the 7.45 Train (I think that was the title), which was incidentally my first time reading Unger and I raced through it. I found the setup of Last Girl Ghosted innovative and exciting, and devoured the first 20% or so, but then I started to get bored. For a thriller, I just wasn't compelled to turn the pages. Then I realised why. I'll explain why, but first here is the setup:
Wren is doing online dating when she swipes on Adam. They meet and fall in love, spending several weeks together and then Adam vanishes. The narrative is in second-person with Wren talking to Adam, and intertwined are flashbacks to Wren's past. Then Wren is contacted by a PI, who is investigating the disappearance of a girl who met Adam online, too and disappeared with him...
So why did this fall apart for me:
- As one reviewer said (I paraphrase) I thought this would be a careful-swiping-you-don't-know-who-you-might-meet cautious story instead I got a oh-this-awful-happened-to-me-and-I'm-still-haunted-by-my-past story. Misleading title and synopsis. I just wasn't intrigued by Wren's childhood and there's a lot of it.
- So much information about current Wren's job. She has a Dear Birdie job, and far too many of her readers stories was shoved in, as an attempt to reflect on issues and be deep.
- In the current story there was no reason for Wren to play detective. So a guy ghosted you, move on. Her life is not in danger; there is no ticking clock. Why is she so eager to hunt him down? It would've been more interesting if say Wren was being stalked and her life was being disrupted. That's the thing. Her life wasn't affected initially. Even the PI says, who is eager to find out Wren's secret, says Adam "might" come back for if she disclosed anything to him. I thought those moments when Wren thought she saw Adam were not compelling enough to serve as motivation for her to play amateur detective.
- Then the resolution felt silly (for my taste).
Wren is doing online dating when she swipes on Adam. They meet and fall in love, spending several weeks together and then Adam vanishes. The narrative is in second-person with Wren talking to Adam, and intertwined are flashbacks to Wren's past. Then Wren is contacted by a PI, who is investigating the disappearance of a girl who met Adam online, too and disappeared with him...
So why did this fall apart for me:
- As one reviewer said (I paraphrase) I thought this would be a careful-swiping-you-don't-know-who-you-might-meet cautious story instead I got a oh-this-awful-happened-to-me-and-I'm-still-haunted-by-my-past story. Misleading title and synopsis. I just wasn't intrigued by Wren's childhood and there's a lot of it.
- So much information about current Wren's job. She has a Dear Birdie job, and far too many of her readers stories was shoved in, as an attempt to reflect on issues and be deep.
- In the current story there was no reason for Wren to play detective. So a guy ghosted you, move on. Her life is not in danger; there is no ticking clock. Why is she so eager to hunt him down? It would've been more interesting if say Wren was being stalked and her life was being disrupted. That's the thing. Her life wasn't affected initially. Even the PI says, who is eager to find out Wren's secret, says Adam "might" come back for if she disclosed anything to him. I thought those moments when Wren thought she saw Adam were not compelling enough to serve as motivation for her to play amateur detective.
- Then the resolution felt silly (for my taste).
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