Review: Girl Last Seen by Nina Laurin

Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Pages: 352

Format: eARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Two missing girls. Thirteen years apart.

Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots.

I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to thirteen years ago.

If you have any knowledge of Olivia Shaw's whereabouts or any relevant information, please contact...

I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, the right look, the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow.

Whoever stole me was never found. But since I was taken, there hasn't been another girl.

And now there is.


Kritters Thoughts:  Laine is working two jobs and trying to support herself and it is revealed early on that she had a hard childhood with a major experience that forever changed who she was.  While working one of her jobs, she sees a missing report, but this one seems different from the rest and pulls her in to figure out what happened to this girl.  

I loved the premise of this story and the first half worked so well for me, but somewhere half way thru I got lost and couldn't really get back into it.  There was a big thing about her past and what happened to her and how it happened that I just didn't get nor enjoy.  I actually rolled my eyes and got frustrated with the book because I just didn't think it worked with the rest of the story.

With all of that, the plot of the story was unique and there are details that I don't want to spoil that made this different from other missing girls books and I liked that.  I just wanted a few of the other things that happened to go a different way - sorry to be vague, but I don't want to ruin someone else's experience by revealing major plot points.  

I enjoyed Laine's present day life and I enjoyed her connection to the Olivia Shaw case.  I even enjoyed who ended up bring the kidnapper and liked their connection to all of it.  

So I am officially on the fence on this one.  There were major parts that I loved and how the plot unfolded, but there were also big parts that didn't work for me at all.  I will say this was a good debut and I would be interested in reading more for this author, but hope the next story is completely solid and a good book from beginning to end.


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Ebook 2017 Challenge: 32 out of 50

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Hachette.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.