Small town facades are on full display. Two sisters , living in the same town are living completely different lives. One , the seemingly perfect sister has just as dark a side as the black sheep sister of the family. When the perfect sister is murdered, it’s up to her sister to find the truth.

A deeply dark, traumatic and twisted thriller!
Just wow... I wanted to stop so many times because the story was heavy and needed digesting, but I couldn't because I NEEDED to know what happened next!!!

Superbly written. I am in awe that this is a debut novel, truly.
Amy please hurry to write more! :)

A huge thank you to NetGalley, Amy K Green and Dutton Books for providing me with an ecopy of this publication which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.

Thank you to Net Galley for the digital advance reader copy of The Prized Girl. This thriller took some unexpected twists. Green did a great job with the alternating voices. I love books that have surprise endings and this one fit the bill. I will recommend to our library's patrons.

I'm starting my review with the ending and a hearty WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT!?!?!

The ending was this weird mix of wrong and anti-climactic and extremely unsatisfying.

As for the rest of the book: it *is* suspenseful and will keep you reading until the end. It's just...messy. It's an everything but the kitchen sink kind of book. Every revelation should be followed by: But wait...let's have another and another and another and so on and so on and so on.

Finally, it's simply hard to read. I'll just say that one of the author's inspirations was clearly JonBenét Ramsey and leave it at that.

I'm...not particularly happy that I read this one.

Told from the alternating perspective of Jenny, a young murder victim, and her sister Virginia, as she tries to find the truth about her sister and the circumstances surrounding her death. The story ends up being disturbing in many ways. Some of the actions of Jenny are unbelievable for her age and Virginia isn't totally likeable but I found myself unable to put this down until the end.

To the outside world, Jenny, a young pageant queen, appears to have the perfect life. But after her brutal murder, we find out that all is not as it seems for Jenny and everyone in her life.

The Prized Girl is a fantastic debut thriller. It combines your traditional thriller elements with a family drama and keeps you turning the pages to find out more. The character development is fantastic, which is tough to do while maintaining the tension and pace needed for a thrilling read. The alternative POVs of Jenny and her step-sister Virginia really works for the narrative and draw you into the family drama and history.

The book is dark, gritty and fully addictive. I can't wait to read more from Amy Green!

I didn’t enjoy the characters or the plot as the story progressed. I thought the ending was too unbelievable and the things that the 13 year old did too awful. Not a novel I would recommend.

Overall, I liked the premise of this story. However I couldn’t connect with the characters - they just weren’t likeable - and I didn’t like the side stories and themes that the author added throughout this book. It was much too long of a story, I think if it was trimmed down, it would have told a better story and would have been more enjoyable.

The Prized Girl by Amy K. Green is a murder mystery/thriller novel and was on my most anticipated reads list for 2020. From the start of the novel we learn that a teen pageant queen, Jenny is dead. We follow Jenny’s half-sister, Virginia, as she tried to uncover what really happened to Jenny.

While this was on my most anticipated reads list I was not captivated by the story. Yes, I did completely binge this book in less than 24 hours but I did not love the story.

Amy Green’s writing was very readable which allowed me to read the story very quickly. However, I couldn’t connect with the characters and I had trouble with the family dynamics. The family just had too many secrets that they were hiding which made me suspect all of them as the true killer of Jenny and I really didn’t like that. The focus should have been on Jenny and her murder, not uncovering the entire families closet skeletons.

I also really did not like Virginia as a character which was hard for me to connect to her and how she was telling the story.

When I read a thriller I look for plot twists, suspense, and a surprise ending. The Prize Girl has all of these elements and definitely kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading. I didn’t like the ending or the scenes leading up to the ending but that is just my opinion.

I can see some scenes being triggering for those who have dealt with sexual abuse and I really disliked the pedophile vibe through out the entire novel.

However, given the amazing readability and writing of the story I ended up enjoying it and gave The Prized Girl 3 stars,

The Prized Girl by Amy Green
I read this for a buddy read with some of my #bookishladiesclub friends and enjoyed this thriller! It is told in dual perspectives and dual timelines. This one made me question some of the character's intentions and reasoning. But, I was hooked and had to know how this played out and how Jenny died. There were so many twists to unpack but they didn't seem too over the top.

This was a fast paced thriller. I didn't know who the killer was until the very end. The sordid details were over the top, just enough to know what was going on.

Thank you Netgally and the author for the gifted copy. All thoughts are completely my own.

I'm not sure what it was with this book, perhaps the way it "flowed", it just didn't sit well with me. I suppose I mean it wasn't for me. Something about the writing style didn't mesh well with me.

3 stars

I wish I could have had more empathy toward the characters. I felt they were such selfish people. The mystery was entertaining, the writing was fine. The ending could use some more work.

This started off strong, but towards the end there was way too much going on, and the ending was just disappointing. There was a sentence at the end that I liked that pulled it together but still, not a good book for me.

This story is told between two points of view: Virginia’s and Jenny’s. Virginia is the older sister of the recent murder victim and is seeking answers to what happened that night and who committed the crime. Jenny is the younger sister of Virginia and her chapters focus on the events leading up to her unexpected death.

This one started off a bit slow for me, but gained momentum about ten chapters in. There’s so much that is unraveled within the course of this novel and by the end not all questions will be answered...

I enjoyed the switching back and forth of perspectives between the two sisters. It kept the plot moving and their stories connected. However, I never really felt like we got to know Virginia. We know what she did--affair with her teacher, odd one day drinking pattern but not really why. I also didn't understand how she didn't know she had been drunk calling her dad for years, all cellphones have a recent list that you see whenever you make a call. Not once in a decade did she notice her drunk dialing? There were a lot of other holes in the plot too.

I think this was a debut novel and I thought the idea had promise. Maybe the author will get it right next time.

I wanted to like this book, but I couldn't.
I loved the description and the cover.... but something just fell flat for me and couldn't finish.

A young pre-teen is found dead in the woods in a small town community. Everyone was shocked, they loved Jenny and had no idea how this could have happened. She came from a picture perfect family in a town where these kinds of these things simply don’t happen.
Her sister, Virginia, is the only one who wants to keep the case open after they find their suspect and arrest him. She doesn’t believe he did it, and she’ll brave anything to find out who actually did it.

Let me tell you, Virginia is one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in awhile. The author did a great job at making her morally grey and difficult. I really appreciated that.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a copy in exchange for a review.

The Prized Girl by author Amy K. Green is a suspense thriller which strives to answer the question of "Who murdered thirteen year old Jenny?" The story is told through the alternating narrative of sisters, Virginia and Jenny. The mystery and suspense held my interest although the characters are selfish and seem to have little moral compass.
Virginia seems to have had so much against her from the time of her mothers' death, the negligence of her father, and then the abuse by a teacher from age fourteen until eighteen. She has never allowed her life to move beyond. these personal hurts and she has become emotionally withdrawn from life and resentful of her family.
Jenny has been trained all of her life to compete in beauty pageants. She is tired of this life. She decides to rebel and her choices in life seem to bring her more trouble. Lies, deceit, and confrontation with her parents reach a crescendo for disaster.
I was disappointed that the truth is never revealed to the parents, police, and public. The story is told and manipulated to please Virginia. She is allowed to control truth, justice, and other people's lives.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I want to start off by saying thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book, it was a very good read easy to follow along with storyline and characters. This was a new author for me but I very much enjoyed it, thank you for the opportunity and I look forward to reading more by this author again. I highly recommend this book to everybody.