Rachel and her teenage daughter, Lucy, have just moved into the infamous Faraday House, where a previous tenant committed suicide after her teenage daughter disappeared. No one can believe they chose to live there, and the gossip begins instantaneously. Lucy soon settles in, makes friends, and starts dating the star swimmer of their town. Swimming to Woodward, Indiana, is like football in Texas, where the players can do no wrong and get away with far too much. Exactly how much and what that has to do with the girls in town is often speculated but never truly investigated. Until Lucy.

The story is written from the point of view of Rachel, with intermingled chapters of members chatting on a Discord server. It can get a bit tiresome reading through those passages entitled ‘We.’ This book would probably do better as a YA story due to the younger vernacular and the numerous chatting passages. And just the plot itself – it’s more about the perception of Lucy and her mother by her peers and how they view other aspects of teenage life and coming of age in Smalltown USA.

And then there’s the non-ending, which irritated me to no end. No spoilers, but you can guess by the title what you might be expecting the resolution to be. It’s almost like by the end, the plot just sputtered out, and the writing became more philosophical rather than informative. If I’m reading a mystery, I expect it to be solved to some extent. The book could have still retained the ‘existential crisis of the younger generation’ aura with a clear-cut conclusion. Honestly, I just didn’t care otherwise.

Lauren Oliver has done it again, written the kind of psychological suspense that feels like it’s wrapping barbed wire around your heart while you can’t stop turning the pages.

From the moment Rachel and her daughter Lucy step into the infamous Faraday House, you know nothing good is going to happen there. The air is thick with the residue of an old tragedy: a mother dead, a daughter vanished. Sixteen years later, that darkness lingers, and now Lucy, new girl, object of fascination, and easy target for small-town gossip, gets pulled into the same hungry cycle of rumor and obsession.

What Oliver nails, beyond the twists and the parallel mysteries, is the psychology of it all: how people consume tragedy like entertainment, how small towns make myths out of girls’ lives, and how mothers are often left to sweep up the wreckage. The tension between past and present, Nina and Lucy, rumor and truth, had me constantly reevaluating who I could trust.

This book is as much about the brutality of gossip and the vulnerability of teenage girls as it is about unraveling two mysteries. It’s creepy, yes, but also devastating, tender, and razor-sharp about the way society watches girls burn and then asks them to smile through the ashes.

By the time the two storylines collide, I was equal parts horrified and heartbroken. Lauren Oliver doesn’t just tell you a story, she leaves you gutted in the best possible way.

Perfect for fans of layered, literary suspense that digs at the psychology of obsession as much as it delivers on twists.

What Happened to Lucy Vale by Lauren Oliver is a psychological suspense that follows two parallel mysteries, connecting two mothers and their daughters across different time periods. The book explores themes of small-town secrets, online harassment, and the enduring power of gossip.

Unfortunately, I struggled to understand what happened in this book. It started off promising and mysterious, but as I continued reading, the pace slowed to a crawl, and it felt like almost nothing was happening. Even after finishing it, I find it challenging to explain the content. The narrative felt excessively lengthy and meandering, lacking a real conclusion. I was tempted to abandon it several times, but I was hoping for a significant "aha" moment, but that never materialised. Reading the teenage gossip through the Discord server was tedious.

I wanted to enjoy this book primarily because of its stunning cover. Unfortunately, I found the writing style unengaging, and the storyline was hard to follow.

I believe I was not the right audience for this book. It may be more suitable for young adults who are more accustomed to this style of communication.

This was such an entertaining that I finished in a few hours.
A well written story that kept me hooked from the very beginning.
The characters draw you in and keeps you flipping the pages.
They are realistic and very well developed.
I really enjoyed the writing style. I found myself hooked, turning the pages.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 out of 5 stars)

I went into What Happened to Lucy Vale with high hopes- it has all the right ingredients: a creepy old house with a dark past, a mysterious disappearance, and a group of teens digging into local lore via Discord chats and ghost stories. The vibes were right, and the opening really pulled me in. That eerie small-town energy? Spot on. I was intrigued by the online message-board format and the “we” narration. It felt like a creative approach to a modern ghost story, and I was ready to be obsessed. But somewhere along the way… it just started to drag.

Each chapter seemed to end with a foreboding line that made me think something major was about to go down, but then it didn’t. I kept reading, waiting for that big moment, but the suspense never really paid off. Instead of twists and reveals, it felt like a slow loop of clues that didn’t lead anywhere solid.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some good stuff here. The Discord formatting and shifting perspectives were unique and gave the story a distinct voice. The town of Woodward felt lived in, and I appreciated the themes of community, memory, and the way stories evolve over time. The commentary on digital culture and collective storytelling was thoughtful too.

But for a book that’s all about what happened to someone, it was frustrating to close it and still feel like I didn’t really get the answer. The resolution was vague and open-ended, which some readers might love, but I personally needed more clarity after such a long buildup.

Overall, What Happened to Lucy Vale had an atmospheric setup and a creative structure, but the pacing and payoff didn’t fully land for me. If you’re here for vibes and experimentation over tight plotting, you might enjoy it more. I’m still curious to see what Lauren Oliver does next, I just hope her next book delivers a little more bite.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Skyscape for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: What Happened to Lucy Vale by Lauren Oliver

Lauren Oliver’s What Happened to Lucy Vale is a sharp, unsettling, and deeply original novel that blends ghost story, coming-of-age drama, and psychological suspense into one unforgettable read.

Rachel Vale and her daughter, Lucy, arrive in Woodward, Indiana, and move into the notorious Faraday House—the same house where, sixteen years earlier, a girl disappeared and her mother was found dead. Almost instantly, Lucy becomes the subject of fascination, suspicion, and gossip. The town, already steeped in rumor, turns her life into spectacle.

What makes this book stand apart is the inventive narrative structure. Parts of the story are told in a collective “we,” voiced through a Discord server of local teens who comment, speculate, and judge. At first, the shifting perspectives feel chaotic, but soon each voice becomes recognizable, and the chorus of online chatter reveals just as much about the storytellers as it does about Lucy. It’s a brilliant way to explore how stories spread, mutate, and take on lives of their own in the digital age.

Oliver doesn’t shy away from heavy themes—herd mentality, rumor as truth, and the way small towns can devour outsiders. Yet she also manages to thread humor and biting satire throughout, capturing the absurdity of teenage bravado and the cruelty of groupthink without ever losing the emotional weight of Lucy’s story.

The setting of Woodward is richly drawn, almost a character itself, with its buried secrets and simmering tensions. And Lucy—complex, frustrating, vulnerable—feels all too real. Just when you think you understand her, the story shifts, forcing you to reevaluate everything you thought you knew.

At its heart, this is a book about the danger of narratives—who gets to tell them, who gets silenced, and how quickly perception can eclipse truth. It’s chilling, timely, and thought-provoking.

What Happened to Lucy Vale is not a straightforward mystery but something bolder: a mirror held up to our own culture of judgment, rumor, and voyeurism. I closed the book unsettled, impressed, and already wanting to reread it.

Brilliantly written, darkly funny, and painfully relevant—this is Lauren Oliver at her best.

I loved the storyline and the characters it kept me wanting to see it through to the very last page thank you for this read

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC. 

I was really excited to start this book because the description sounded so, so intriguing! Unfortunately the actual execution of the book didn't grip me. 

The book was overlong and really, really boring after a while. 

The discord server gossip and the we chapters was an interesting idea, but made for a weird reading experience. 

I think this would have been a good book if it was a hundred pages shorter.