The Girls By Lisa Jewell

[amazon_link id=”1780893590″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’The Girls’ is the latest book by Lisa Jewell.

You live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbours for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really? Midsummer night: a thirteen-year-old girl is found unconscious in a dark corner of the garden square. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?

Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite authors, she has managed to transcend successfully from female fiction to something a bit darker, her books are dark and twisty and are usually set in one location and her latest book ‘The Girls’ is exactly like that.

The story is set in two parts, simply Before and After and is primarily seen through the eyes of the mothers Clare and Adele who both live in the communal garden square. Clare is new to the neighbourhood, with her two daughters Grace and Pip. Clare is a quiet, nervous character who is trying to escape her past, saddened by the state of her life, she likes the idea of the communal garden as it will offer her daughters friendship and fun through the summer evenings, Pip is bubbly and fun whilst Grace is a teenager and finding most things boring and beginning to notice boys, much to Clare’s concern. Her neighbour Adele, is the mother hen of the garden, children flock to her house for food and banter. She is alternative in her upcoming, she home schools her three daughters and encourages them to express themselves which they do with their flamboyant behaviour. She is generous and looks out for Clare and also takes her daughters under her wing and welcomes them all warmly.

The two parts of the story focus on the before and the after of the attack, when Clare’s eldest daughter Grace is left unconscious and in a coma. The lead up is originally written with suspicious characters, people with grudges that makes everyone a suspect in the story, as people collide and new relationships begin and the after of the attack, when secrets are revealed and we all wonder whether we guessed correctly.

Lisa has created characters that you can develop a bond with, particularly Pip, Clare’s youngest daughter who writes letters to her father wishing he was with them and we are left wondering what happened to the family, often Pip’s letters are sad as she expresses emotions but often they are sweet and funny as she confides in him about their new life. Set in a communal garden, the backdrop is quite an exotic one, but I found the setting to be quite claustrophobic as they never seemed to leave the garden and I thought this gave the story quite an unsettling and haunting atmosphere to it.

Compelling from the very beginning, ‘The Girls’ is an emotional roller coaster of a story, cleverly and humanely written, the book keeps you on your toes as you try to guess the suspect, but in Lisa’s unique style of writing which is packed with twists and turns, nothing can be predicted.

You can pre-order [amazon_link id=”1780893590″ target=”_blank” ]The Girls from Amazon [/amazon_link]and is available to buy from good bookshops from 2nd July 2015.