I am completely in love with this book. It's so intense and so creepy and just really, really good. 

Like with Marisha Pessl's Night Film, the horror movies described are completely brutal and unflinching. Part of me wants to watch them and part of me is like, "You will never recover." ALSO like Night Film, the movies are a catalyst for a plot that is...well, also brutal and unflinching. Reading this book was a little bit like a fever dream. I wasn't sure what was happening or what was real. 

This book isn't for everyone. There's a lot going on and there's a lot of violence. Jennifer Wolfe doesn't hold much back, and sensitive readers are going to have a hard time of it (although I suspect they're not going to get very far). 

I was hooked immediately, though, and I am so in for everything else Jennifer Wolfe writes.

Recommended.

A missing sister? A former teen star? A series of disappearances? A town made famous by horror movies? How has this genius combination of thrills not been combined in a book before now?! I was fascinated by Watch the Girls’ blurb straightaway, which of course led to the concern that the actual book wouldn’t live up to my expectations. But thankfully that concern was unfounded because Wolfe delivered exactly what I wanted. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Where to begin? A lot goes on in Watch the Girls and it took me until around halfway through the book before I saw what it was that connected the different elements: family. I have said this before, but the idea of family is incredibly potent in literature. Whether it’s Anna Karenina or Coraline, authors have always found inspiration in family relationships. Our family is, in a large part, what shapes us but it is also something we have to depart from at some point to consider ourselves independent adults. You can never quite let it go, of course, and the smallest tensions can lead to major fallouts. But it can also be a fountain of endless love and support, inspiring books likeLittle Women and A Little Princess. In Watch the Girls, Wolfe shows the darker sides of family life: jealousy and fear, the desire to protect and the desire to destroy. In the end it made sense that this potent network of connections is what motivates much of the twists and turns in Watch the Girls.

Watch the Girls follows Liv (Olivia) Hendricks, once a teen star and now a struggling C-lister at best. She wants nothing to do with all the glitz and glam, but she needs money so after being fired from her latest set she crowdfunds a new enterprise: Liv solving mysteries! But her first mystery takes her straight back to her own past. AsWatch the Girls moves between Liv trying to solve the disappearance of young women, young Olivia relives her own trauma of losing her youngest sister and remembering nothing of the night. Wolfe plays interestingly with (social) media, letting the reader see the Tweets Liv gets while also looking at the influence of too much exposure at a young age. And then there are the horror movies that made the locale of the disappearances famous. Wolfe indirectly examines why we are obsessed with what horrifies us, if there is something we can learn from facing our worst fears, and where those fears come from. I loved how Wolfe used the image of the wolf in Watch the Girls. The wolf has always been a fascinating figure, a pack animal with strong loyalties yet also a hunter at night.

I had never read anything by Jennifer Wolfe before, but Watch the Girls has definitely made me a fan. Although there are a number of tropes in the book she manages to avoid it becoming cliché. Her writing feels honest, while also giving you exactly the thrills and scares that you want. There is some truly horrifying stuff in this book, but Wolfe avoids sensationalism. ‘Dead girls’ is a popular topic in modern fiction and it can at times be problematic (click here for a very interesting article on this topic), but Wolfe manages to move around this relatively well. In a sense the world’s obsession with dead or disappeared girls is central to this novel as well, asking us why we think it so important to watch girls suffer on camera or in fiction. What is it supposed to teach us? Who is it really for? In a sense this question is also posed to the reader. Why are we so fascinated with this story of girls and women suffering? Watch the Girls doesn’t give an answer to those questions, but I was glad that aside from being a fascinating thriller that had me on the edge of my seat it also gave me food for thought.

While reading Watch the Girls it chased everything else from my mind. When I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it. I loved trying to figure out what was happening, moving with the twists and turns and rooting for Liv to overcome everything that was thrown at her.

I received an advanced reading copy to read and review.

Liv Hendricks is a washed up child tv star, who lost her sister and her memories one night over ten years ago. She is currently making money acting in a bullshit rendition of Scooby Doo. After being fired because of a drunken tirade caught on tape she offers herself up to investigate for hire through a online web page. The donation comes in the form of a horror director name Kron and the dark road...a road where 4 women have come up missing never to be seen again.

Loved it.....sooo creepy. It's like Drew Barrymore meets Blair witch project. Washed up tv star Liv Hendricks lost her memories and a sister over ten years ago. As the puzzle snaps into place your spellbound to finish this book. After the first chapter I was hooked and did not want to put this down. The suspense was crazy, and the messages from the dark wolf just chilling. Five huge stars of entertainment!

Actress Olivia Hill is 17 when her younger sister disappears from the car never to be seen again. Years later Olivia has changed her name to Liv Hendricks and just got fired from her "reality" tv show about investigating paranormal activity. She gets a chance to create a web series following her as a psuedo-PI investigating disappearances of girls in a small town when things become twisted and mysterious. Watch the Girls is mainly told through first person POV with some social media and news articles thrown in for clarification and to show the affects such things have in our world today.

I spent a lot of time while reading this book thinking "this is a lot like......" Blair Witch, Twin Peaks, Scooby Doo, and even Eyes Wide Shut. So if you are a fan of any of those, you would probably enjoy this book. Three sisters under the thumb of their fame and money obsessed mother. The youngest disappears leaving the older two devastated, each in their own way. Several years later, Olivia (or Liv) is down on her luck and decides to do a movie version of a Kickstarter. Her highest bidder wants her to track down a serial killer and THEN things start getting weird. As I kept reading (just one more chapter before bedtime) I worried that this would be the chapter to give me nightmares. I am somewhat surprised I didn't have any. This book stayed just on this side of the line between thriller and horror for me.

Jennifer Wolfe’s new novel, WATCH THE GIRLS, starts with two sisters ( the youngest and the oldest) driving to “rescue” the middle girl – a wild child, television ingénue with a penchant for trouble. Flash forward a decade and a half and the oldest sister, Liv ( Olivia) is practically a has been in the tv realm, while the middle sister, Gemma, has gained stardom and fame at the cost of everyone and everything around her. The baby sister disappeared during that night 15 years ago, throwing Liv into a depression and a destructive lifestyle.

Now, her once promising tv career has been relegated to being one of 4 cohosts for a reality investigative show that’s as pathetic as it sounds. The mystery she really wants to solve is what happened to her baby sister all those years ago. When a mysterious and anonymous benefactor asks her to solve a mystery for him – for $20,000 cash, Liv can’t say no and doesn’t want to. What happens next is the basis for the majority of the book.

There was a great deal I liked about this book and an equal amount I did not. Liv’s destructive behaviors – drinking too much and have indiscriminate sex – were uncomfortable for me to read, but they did go a long way in cementing her character and the choices she made throughout the book. The whole Wolf legend, while weird, fit the storyline.

Her sister Gemma I deplored. Nothing I can say is good about her, so in that sense, she was a great foil for Liv.
The secondary characters were all well drawn, if not more than a little creepy, but again, the storyline depended on them being so.

Because I read so much mystery, police procedurals, and suspense, I knew who the bad person was way before it was revealed, but that didn’t hinder my liking the book one bit.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me an arc of this book for a review. It’s a well written, tightly drawn novel that truly makes you want to find out what’s going on, why, and what’s going to happen next.

4.5 stars.

I did enjoy this book. The shift from the opening scene to the present was not as smooth as it could have been. I was left wondering what had happened to Olivia's sister. One moment she was driving to pick her up from a party and the next moment she is with her other sister on her way to investigating the disappearance of several women.

I liked Olivia. She was flawed but personable. She may have been a celebrity but she did not flaunt this status. In fact, it was kind of a hindrance to her. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the women was dark. "Follow the white wolf". A path that is filled with secrets and blood.

Ms. White spins a good tale with interesting characters and a storyline that will keep you reading until the last page. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Wolfe hits it out of the park with this innovative meta-thriller. Keep an eye on this author as she's meant for great things,

In 2003 Actress Olivia Hill had a hit TV show with her sister Gemma and movie roles were beginning to pour in. Their "momager", Desiree, was overbearing and more interested in money than the well being of her daughters and Gemma began a dangerous spiral with drugs and alcohol. Olivia and younger sister Miranda received a frantic call from Gemma asking if they'd pick her up from a party on Mulholland Drive. The evening ended in a car crash: Olivia suffered a traumatic brain injury and Miranda disappeared, never to be seen again.
15 years later, Olivia has changed her name to Liv Hendricks and finds herself broke and unemployed after she's let go from a B-list reality show. With the power of the internet, she manages to crowd fund a web series where she'll pose as a detective to investigate mysteries and the person who pledges the most gets to choose her first investigation.
Legendary horror film maker Jonas Kron pledges $20K for Liv to come to the small town of Stone's Throw made famous by his films to investigate the disappearances of four young women, including his niece actress Annika Kron, on Dag Road now known as the Dark Road. His only request is that he remain anonymous so he doesn't start a media firestorm that will overshadow his film festival in town.
Liv heads to Stone's Throw with little information, until she receives an ominous clue via social media: follow the white wolf. Her web series is garnering plenty of attention and she's making headway thanks to the mysterious clues left anonymously when her sister Gemma disappears on the Dark Road.
Liv's popularity explodes thanks to viewers and everyone is discussing the shocking disappearance; rumors are flying that Gemma's disappearance is nothing but a publicity stunt.
Caught up in Kron's strange world of horror in a secretive small town, everyone is a suspect. With all her attention on the missing girls that now include Gemma, Liv begins to think back to the night Miranda disappeared and reality begins to blur. What is the connection between all of these young women?
Most of the twists felt obvious after a point but that didn't make the plot any less exciting. Watch the Girls is a fast paced thriller with plenty of shocking moments written with the cult horror film/grindhouse genre in mind.

I'll also add a *trigger warning* for sexual violence/rape.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

It’s been fifteen years since Liv Hendricks left Hollywood after a party out of control left Liv injured and her younger sister missing till this day. With no money and no way of supporting herself, Liv reluctantly steps back into public view, looking for sponsors to help her create a web series where she will be a real private detective. She gets an infusion of cash from an anonymous donor who challenges her to find out what happened to a series of girls who disappeared. Her starting clue is “Follow the white wolf”, she will receive more clues as she progresses, while the whole thing is viewed live on the web. Full of unexpected twists and turns, this was a book I just couldn’t put down