Read this book if you like: Queer representation, cult like vibes, tough subjects

Georgia is trying to escape poverty. She's 16 years old. She discovers the dead body of 13 year old named Ashley James. She teams up with Ashley's older sister, Nora, to find and bring the killer to justice before he strikes again. Their investigation throws Georgia into a world of unimaginable privilege and wealth, without conscience or consequence. As Ashley’s killer closes in, Georgia discovers when money, power and beauty rule, it might not be a matter of who is guilty but who is the guiltiest.

I saw it's a queer thriller and I almost fell over with excitement. Then, I read a review where someone said they could barely read this because it was so disturbing. Count me in. 🤣 They were not wrong. Absolutely check the triggers for this one. There are some tough subjects through out this book. This was gripping, powerful, addictive, and very uncomfortable. I could not put it down. I flew through it in hours. It's going to stick in my brain. Highly recommend this one! It comes out September 13th.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books for the gifted book!

Georgia is a teenager who has always known that she’s deserved better, deserved more. After finding the body of a murdered girl in town, she works with the victim’s sister to find out what happened.

Told from Georgia’s POV, she truly felt like a naive teenage girl. She was put into situations that were uncomfortable to say the least, but really important to have a focus on. The true win of this story is a demonstration of how quickly a situation can turn for a young girl in a world full of adults, but I wouldn’t read this one without looking at the trigger warnings.

Overall, I found the story to play out in a predictable fashion when it comes to the murder mystery. The relationship between Georgia and Nora was flawed in a way only true teenagers can be. Lastly, I felt the end was unsatisfying. Important topics that just didn’t quite hit the mark for me by the end.

📚Read this if you like:
- LGBT representation
- Provocative topics
- Relationships within murder/thrillers

TW: sexual assault, sexual harassment, grooming

When I saw Courtney Summers was releasing a new book, I had no choice but to jump on it. I loved Sadie, it's one of my top YA thriller reads ever and I always crave a story like it.

I’m the Girl is about a 16-year-old girl who dreams of escaping poverty and sees her beauty as a way out. When she discovers the body of a 13-year-old girl, she is lured into a world filled with wealth, privilege, and power, at the risk of losing herself.

Georgie's character is complex and I enjoyed the story a lot. This book tackled some topics that are often hard to read and hear about, so please be aware of the potential triggers from that.


Thank you #netgalley for an early read of #imthegirl

Wow! This was dark and gritty and I loved it! Will definitely be following Courtney Summers! This one made my heart race and great characters kept me totally invested in the story. Although a tough subject, this book was written and executed with care. Highly recommend
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book

Overall, I loved this book, despite the incredible painful subject matter.

The story, the writing, the way I was pulled in to these characters and their pain… all things I loved. Things that happen to the people in these pages is heart-wrenching. Courtney Summers has done a fabulous job creating the feeling this book elicits. It’s both in your face and subtle at the very same time. Mirroring horrors of the real world, this book is believable and disturbing.

Georgia longs to be better than how she was raised. She has big dreams, even though she doesn’t know quite what they are yet. Stumbling across the dead, abused body of the sherif’s thirteen year old daughter, Ashley shakes up her life in ways she never imagined. Strangely, it brings her closer to one dream she has… Aspera! An elite country club catering to the rich and glamorous. And she is going to be an Aspera girl… but is that a good thing?

Another way this event has changed her life is her interactions with Ashley’s sister, Nora. What had been a tentative dislike between the two, buds into something so much more as they maneuver through Nora’s pain and Georgia’s healing.

I can’t get past how I felt about our main character, Georgia. She is incredibly self-aware, and yet knowingly and purposefully ignorant when it suits her. I flip-flopped between caring for her and being infuriated with her, resorting to the realization that I can feel them simultaneously. Though, that is what brought this from a five to a four star for me.

3.5

While not my favorite book by Courtney Summers, I was still captivated by I'm the Girl. This book is intense, with trigger warnings galore! Summers is willing to dig in deep, and I applaud her for that.

Quick synopsis: Georgia Avis is 16 and her single mother passed away from terminal cancer, leaving her under the care of her older brother. Things are tough - they are poor. Georgia's mother worked for a local exclusive resort in the community called Aspera, catering to the rich until she was ousted for stealing around the time she was diagnosed with cancer. Georgia has been obsessed with being an "Aspera Girl" since she was young, much to the dismay of her mother. At the start of the novel, Georgia comes upon the dead body of a local missing teen Ashley James, and she's about to get a job at Aspera because of it. She teams up with the older sister, Nora, of the dead teen, Ashley, to try and figure out who murdered her and try and figure out some other weird occurrences that start to happen to Georgia. Is Georgia about to make it, or is she in bigger trouble than before?

Tough topics are tackled, and things get uncomfortable, which I think is important. But as a reader, I was also left confused at many parts of the novel and left scratching my head. I don't like how the novel wrapped up - I don't feel like the story was complete, finished - I'm not satisfied as a reader. I can deal with a disjointed story, but I like things tied up in the end.

Summers writing is beautiful, addictive and flows beautifully but the plot had some holes in my mind and this novel falls short of the high bar that the author set for herself with Sadie.

I would be hesitant to recommend this book to my high school students because of how dark and heavy the themes are, but I do think that this book was very beautiful written. That's not to say I think my students shouldn't read it, I'm just not sure if I want to be the person who recommends it. I found myself wholly invested in the plot throughout this entire novel and it was a great teen thriller.

I have really complicated feelings about this. I read it very quickly, in one evening after work after struggling through another book, as I did find it very readable and pretty compelling. I felt for Nora most, and Georgia to some degree. The mystery isn't as strong as we're led to expect from the blurb or Courtney Summers' past work, and I kept finding myself wondering when we were going to get back on track, though it ended up exactly where I expected it, in terms of the criminals. The world was well rendered and the relationships with Matthew and Cleo were built subtly and slowly, when another author would have hit us over the head with it.
Ultimately, though, my complicated feelings come mostly from the lack of resolution or justice or even a point. Summers' themes and ideas around wealth and privilege, male gaze and violence against women, are clear on the surface, but they don't really go anywhere. While I liked that there wasn't an easy resolution of the criminals being brought to justice in 15 pages, as the ending did have a realistic feeling, the ideas of the book and the issues Georgia is grappling with aren't resolved or even really advanced.

3.5/5

This was the first book I’ve read by this author, and it was definitely not what I was expecting. And considering it is listed as a YA read, it is VERY dark. This book encompasses pretty much every trigger you could think of for someone: sexual assault, emotional abuse by a parent, murder, and a lot of grooming/adults taking advantage of minors…

This book tells the story of 16 year old Georgia Avis, who almost gets murdered right after another girl in her town gets murdered. Together with the victims sister, they team up to find the killer on the loose.

While this is a coming of age (Georgia deciding who she is and wants to do with her life, who she loves) it is a dark and suspenseful one. In the timeframe of the book, Georgia is aspiring to become someone everyone will know, someone famous, someone who makes it out of her small-minded town. She sets her sights on a summer job becoming a country club girl at the local private resort in her town, with which her family has a checkered history, and it also introduces her to many people who could make her modelling dreams come true.

I enjoyed this book from start to finish. It was nothing like I expected, and different than anything I have read before. While I wouldn’t recommend for it’s intended youth audience, I would definitely recommend to everyone else 😍 thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book I’m exchange for my honest review.

See my post on Instagram @night.shift.reads

One of the reviews I read of this book said simply "this book gave me the icks." It gave me SO MANY icks and not in a good way.
I thought this was going to be a good murder mystery similar to Sadie (which I loved). It was not. It was basically about a 16 year old girl who is exploited for her looks by old men. And she likes it. And she isn't even straight. The only characters I semi liked was the love interest and Georgia's brother. I did not like the main character Georgia. I did not like her *need* to be an Aspera Girl (not sure of spelling as I listened to the audio). It did not go into great detail of what it meant to be an Aspera Girl, but it was heavily implied and definitely not something a 16 year old girl should be doing. I did not like the several scenes of basically rape that Georgia thought was something ok to do, something she should be doing. Yuck.
The murder mystery part wasn't even that great. It honestly wasn't even talked about a lot because it focused heavily on Georgia's need to be an Aspera Girl. The ending went so fast it was honestly a little confusing about who the murderer even was.
Overall, like I said before. The icks. Not really for me. The writing style was ok and kept me listening until the end, but probably not one I will be recommending.

"This world was made by men. Beauty is decided by them. And power is held only by them. And there’s nothing you can do about any of it."

All queer sixteen year old Georgia really wants is to be beautiful and loved. She thinks she'll achieve that by becoming an "Aspera Girl" at the resort nearby owned by the wealthy Hayes family, where her Mom worked before succumbing to cancer.

Then she finds the body of 13 year old local Ashley, hit by a car presumably driven by the killer but she didn't see his face. That's frustrating people in town, mostly Ashley's older sister Nora who is searching for answers. Georgia ends up taking a desk job at Aspera to look for clues about Ashley's death and we begin the hunt.
Georgia is sucked in to a terrible world of lies and deceit and heartbreak and pain. This was hard to read.

Thank you Netgalley and Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press for allowing me to read and review this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I've always loved Courtney Summers' writing style and that is no different with I'm the Girl. Each time I read one of their books I feel like I'm being clawed by the hands of her main characters. You can feel every emotion, every loss, their grief and trauma.

I'm the Girl is a gripping and dark read that will grip onto you emotionally from the first chapter. Though the pacing is slow-going, it built and built making you wonder how everything will go for Georgia in the end. The story is thought-provoking, powerful, and will haunt you after you're finished.

I look forward to whatever Courtney Summers has in store for us next.

4.5 stars

I’m The Girl is a powerful story which combines a murder mystery with a young girl’s rite of passage into an adulthood no one her age should ever have to endure. It is not helped by some who would prefer to lie in order to take advantage of her. It also shows the power of suggestion and what some young women want to believe in order to achieve their dreams.

Georgia Avis is 16 years old. She lives with her older brother. Their mother has passed away and they are barely making ends meet. It’s Georgia’s dream to become a model and make it big, which it seems everyone except her mother has told her.

Their mother when she was alive worked for Aspera, a place where rich people go, and all their dreams come true. They have what they call “Aspera girls” who help these famous people get what they want. Unfortunately for Georgia, her mother was fired from Aspera and with the firing went Georgia’s dream of being an Aspera girl. Or so she thought.

It’s summer and Georgia is trying to create her own destiny. She had met a man at the mall who told her she was so beautiful she could become a model and she should get head shots. Unfortunately, she fell for the idea and took all the extra money her brother Tyler had put aside. She never found the man after the photo shoot and realized much too late it was a scam. Putting the poverty-stricken duo deeper into debt. But Georgia is confident she knows her beauty will help them. She knows if she could just get a job working at Aspera their money problems would go away.

Tragically one day she discovers the dead body of a young girl on the road, only to be hit by a car in the process of finding her. She was lucky that the owner of Aspera had been driving by and was able to help her. The dead girl, Ashley, is the sister of someone she slightly knows who she has had a crush on since she was younger. Her name is Nora James, and her father works on the police force.

When Georgia is approached by the owner of Aspera to work as an Aspera apprentice, she jumps at the chance, being told that her beauty will get her far. Meanwhile, Ashley’s sister Nora decides she needs to find out who killed her sister and Georgia agrees to help her.

As Georgia and Nora begin to get closer, Georgia is having a difficult time understanding the rules at Aspera. What she begins to understand is power can trump the truth. Georgia will never be able to go back to being the innocent girl she was at the beginning of the summer, even though she seems to think her beauty is sustaining the cash she is receiving for her job.

But when Georgia and Nora’s worlds blow up, they will only have each other.

The It Girl is the initiation of a young innocent girl into the dark, seedy underworld of people who can make you believe you are the most important, beautiful person on earth only to disregard and break you. Manipulation and abuse are a disturbing combination and a life lesson a young woman should not have to endure.

Thank you #NetGalley #WednesdayBooks #CourtneySummer #I’mTheGirl for the advanced copy.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warning for this book: sexual assault. The overall story of this book is well-written, honest, and raw. At times, I had to pause reading to take a breather from the intensity of the plot and subject matter.

If you liked Courtney Summers last book, Sadie, this book is similar to that. Being about a teenage girl tossed into a dark and depressing world. This book is about Georgie, a sixteen-year-old girl whose life changes after she accidentally finds the body of a younger girl.

This book is heavy and you need to be in the right headspace to read it. I have mixed emotions about it but it's an amazing and powerful book.

Courtney Summers' books demand us to look at the girls who go invisible in the world. The ones who don't get our praise and don't get our pity. The ones who are scraping their way through this life and trying so hard just to exist at all. She asks us to get in their heads and see them. Know them. Understand their dreams, their flaws, their loves. She doesn't ask us to pity them, she just asks us to look. To look and acknowledge that they're there.
'I'm the Girl' is a tough read. It's tough because of the content and even tougher because it is meant to be a fictional mirror into a very real and very awful reality. 'I'm the Girl' is a story about exploitation and power and girls trying to find their place in the world. It's a story about dead girls and living ones, and how easy it is for us to look away while bad things happen. It's also a story about first love and hope and resistance.
It's hard to give a rating or review to a book like this because this book that is meant to make you angry. It's meant to make you rage against the way this world treats girls as a commodity to be used and thrown away. It's meant to ask you what we are supposed to do about it. So I don't really know how to give this a series of stars because I inhaled this book and I hated it and I enjoyed it and I put it down at the end not really knowing how to hold all those feelings in at once. But here it is. If you like Courtney Summers' work, this one won't disappoint.

I'm the Girl is a gripping young adult mystery thriller that takes readers on a wild ride. This book is thought-provoking, sad, and intriguing!

I'm the Girl by Courtney Summers did not hold my interest. After reading 75 pages, I could not agree with the situations the main character put herself in.

3.5**

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!

There was something about this one that didn't do it for me. EVERY other time Courtney's amazing cult vibes and writing really gets me full on, but for some reason this one didn't hit.
Georgie is a grey character with a lot of growing up needed, but I enjoyed her & she was easy to get behind and follow in this story. This was all a bit complex with how characters knew each other as well as Aspera and the dynamics. Geeeez, that place is a horror show - which is my cup of tea. (yes I need therapy)
I can't say much else as I am not sure where the problem really lies, just that the story was all over the place and it wasn't revolutionary as many others have been. Courtney Summers still remains an author for me!

Thoughts

It is absolutely unconscionable that this book has been published for and marketed toward children. YA is a marketing category enjoyed by a lot of people, a fair chunk of them adults, but it is, at the end of the day, a category meant to be for teens--that is, minors. The amount of on-the-page assault in this book would be too much for an adult audience. For an audience of children, it is entirely reprehensible. I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone.


Pros
Family: One of the few things that I appreciated about this book was its inclusion of family. Characters like Georgia, who are easily taken advantage of, often have no family to speak of--or no functioning family, if they do have an (addict) mother or father. Georgia might be an orphan, but her older brother has stepped in to care for her. And he does care for her a great deal, as much as he fails to protect her in this book. I appreciate his inclusion, at least.

Hard Reality: One of the things that I appreciate about Courtney Summers is that she doesn't steer away from hard characters and terrible realities. The things that happen to Georgia in this book aren't unthinkable--which is part of what makes the things that happen to her so terrible. This book goes too far, but I can at least commend Summers for going there at all. A lot of authors would avoid it entirely.

Growing Relationship: A lot of YA romances happen fast, fast, fast. They meet, they crush, and they are so, so in love in that (quick) order. This book doesn't move so fast. It also doesn't move glacially slow. These girls grow on each other. They support each other and figure out life--and then their respective feelings--together. And that more realistic pace is nice.


Cons
Gratuitous: Anyone who has read Courtney Summers's work before won't be surprised to know that this book is harsh. But from the very first page, the narrative here is rough, rough, rough. The on-page assault (with no repercussions, I might add) is a lot. One assault would be a lot for the market. This book had significantly more than one. The sex and sexual violence in this book weren't just harsh. They felt gratuitous, and that's not a word that I use lightly. I would highly advise, for anyone who doesn't want to fill their head with sexual violence, to AVOID, AVOID, AVOID this book.

Jumbled: On top of the content issue here, this book had a narrative issue as well. That is, the narrative ends up pretty jumbled and hard to follow. It makes sense, coming from the perspective of a character who is repeatedly and horrifically assaulted. Her narrative perhaps shouldn't come out quite coherently. But for readers, it can be tough to follow without any sort of grounding in the world. From page one, this book goes, goes, goes without much through-line.

No Reflection: I'm not a person who needs a happily-ever-after. I don't even need a happy-for-now. In some cases, I even prefer not to have a nice and neat conclusion. But here, in this book soaked in assault and marketed toward teenagers, I would expect at the very least for this narrative to end on a note of reflection. Hope would, of course, be better. But this book ends in nothing. There's no reflection. Nothing changes. It's just terrible, awful, horrible through to the end.


Rating
⭐
1/10

Fans of Courtney Summers's The Project might enjoy this new harsh reality. Those looking for a new dead-end protagonist after Laurie Devore's A Better Bad Idea may enjoy this new girl-at-the-end-of-the-line.

This queer thriller by Courtney Summers lies within the same universe as Summer's previous book, Sadie. It's just as brutal too and poignantly heartbreaking. Georgia Avis lives with her much older brother after their mother, a housekeeper at Aspera, an exclusive resort, died from an aggressive cancer. She'd never wanted Georgia to work there, but after Georgia is hit by a car on the road to the resort, she's rescued by the owner. Georgia teams up with her old crush to investigate her younger sister's rape and death while trying to track down the photographer who took nude pictures of Georgia.

Lots of trigger warnings
Young Adult

4.3/5