The Forgotten Girls by Monica Potts is an eye-opening, gut churning memoir that I absolutely could not put down. The author mirrors her life with that of her childhood best friend, who remains in their small Southern town and succumbs to crime, addiction, and abuse. It is heartbreaking, tenderly pulling back the curtain on a segment of America that I (in my NYC area & Ivy League education) have never personally seen but now have deep empathy for.

This was an eye-opener book to say the least.
As a non-US citizen we are always fed the narrative about how good the small town/rural USA is. I found myself rather stunned and horrified at how life really is for some folk over there. Being more or less the same age as the author and Darci made this book even more relatable to me - comparing our upbringings in rural USA to rural SA (South Africa). It was world's apart. I think the first time I became aware of a girl falling pregnant was in my second last year - I suppose other girls who maybe fell pregnant were the ones who "moved to another town" and the worst 'drugs' that the hard-core city kids who were posted to our boarding school did was smoking and drinking ciders.....
This was so much more than a memoir of her best friend's lot in life. It was anecdotal with all the interviews with people from Darci's life and the author and Darci's memories but then the author brought statistics and research in to highlight the huge social issues. Making the book very well-balanced.
It was not the easiest book to read as often I just needed to step back, think and digest what I had read.
A brilliant read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book.

I wasn’t thrilled with the writing in this, it read less like a memoir and more like a textbook. I wanted more of a story and I was disappointed.

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book.

The author grew up in a rural, very poor town where she and her friend Darci had big dreams to get out and make a different type of life for themselves. The author got out, Darci did not.

I appreciated the idea behind it and I do have an interest in books that explore poverty and the systemic factors behind it. The book was well-written and I found it a pretty quick read.

It kind of felt like two different books, one of which was discussing various studies and statistics relating to small towns, poverty, and white women. The other half was focused on the author's childhood friendship with Darci and how her life has turned out as an adult.

The story of Darci's descent into drugs and hopelessness was difficult to read but after several chapters detailing the struggles with drugs, domestic abuse, money and being in and out of jail, there's no real progression or conclusion to the story. Darci is in no way in a better place than she's ever been and there's no lessons or hopefulness to take away from the story. I know that life doesn't always have a happy ending but it just feels like a list of all the horrible ways life is for the people in this town like Darci. There are no real ups and downs in the story, just downs. It was more unrelenting misery than a story arc. I think this book would have benefitted from more time having passed to get some perspective on how Darci's life ends up because as of the end of the book, it feels like the middle of her story.

Another book about the forgotten folks of the small town South. This one is told from the point of view of two women who could have followed the same path as each other, but somehow didn't. I found the storytelling to be a little disjointed. There were themes, but they never really came through as clearly as I would have liked. In the end, it is simply just sad, sad, sad, but I think we can always benefit from hearing the stories of people we might never encounter in our own limited lives.

The story doesn't end for these two women. There's still a long way to go for them... I hope.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It will help some readers understand more about others' lives.

I like quite a bit about The Forgotten Girls by Monica Potts. We are similar in age so many of her references are familiar to me. I, too, am from a relatively poor, rundown part of rural America, part of the country that many call "flyover' states. I also grew up as an intelligent girl, dying to escape my circumstances. I also have watched as numerous childhood friends have fallen victim to drugs, abuse, and the pitfalls of circumstance.

That said, I did feel a bit lost by the ultimate overall story of this memoir. Was this about coming home and recognizing the past? Was this about rekindling that long-ago friendship that once meant so much? It reads like a white savior in parts and a bit like 'I'm above it all' in others.

The backstory on the history of the mountain and the county was interesting, but do feel that, overall was too much information. The history and historical significance of poverty and religion are essential but its impact was almost negated in the overarching story of Darci and Monica's friendship.

Still, it's a memoir about friendship and sisterhood and that's fantastic. It's about two women who found their way back to each other.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and the author for granting me an advance copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.

I really tried to love this book, but perhaps I expected a bit to much.

The story kept switching between characters and was very hard to follow. There was no normal transition.

The book did not seem to be well mapped out. It seemed like a bunch of disjointed thoughts with no clear plot.

The author seemed to be dealing with her own guilt as to why she survived, but her friend did not. She presented many problems, but no solutions. Maybe that was her point? I just could not see the point.

I can not recommend.

The Forgotten Girls was a tough read, but well-written. I didn't love all of the religious discussion, but I did appreciate the author's exploration of how an evangelical society can ruin women. Monica and Darci were fleshed out characters, and I appreciated watching how their lives turn out.

As someone who grew up in a small, rural community and moved far away for college and life beyond, I related so deeply to Monica’s story. The details of Monica’s hometown and upbringing were so validating to me. While I’ve never moved back, I juggled a lot of the feelings brought forth in the book as I came home from college to friends having more babies or engaging in abusive relationships while I was living a completely different life.

Monica’s tenderness and empathy for Darci was so touching. I can’t remember the last time I highlighted a book as much as The Forgotten Girls. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the challenges of rural Southern communities, especially someone with first hand experience.

Want to thank Random House and NetGallery for the ARC for my honest review. There’s just a ton of issues with this book. It never actually tries to get of the bottom of anything. It shoves it off as religion, men and white people are bad. It’s never the actual person’s fault who actually made the decisions. Maybe Monica was too close to the story. Maybe she just wanted to make excuses. I don’t know. But this is a book I’d skip.

To sum up this review in on word, it’d be wow and it’s not a good wow. I read a ton of nonfiction but just found this book very dull and boring. I read every page of the first 30% of the book and then I started skipping paragraphs. My thoughts on the content:

“I heard, at lease once, a lesson about the need to trust fully in God’s plan, to give one’s life up to God” – Pg 53
That’s kinda how religion works. Same could be said for any religion out there. Why else would you believe in a God?

“People went to churches that preached heaven as the ultimate reward for people who were personally pious and Christian and repentant; earth was just a temporary place.” - Pg 54
Yeah…that’s kinda what Christianity/religion is about. Again, same applies to every religion. Your end goals is to reap the rewords of said religion.

“This philosophy conveniently absolves people who are better off—financially and materially—from trying to help those in need” - Pg 54
This is completely unbiblical. There’s tons of verses talking about giving and charity.

Acts 20:35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Hebrews 13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Proverbs 19:17 Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.

Luke 21:1-4 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him

“men and women had natural, God-given roles that were fundamentally different.” - Pg 55
Yep…not sure why this is considered bad. News flash..men and women are different.

“To counter feminist rhetoric, both male and female evangelical teachers asserted that the only thing that makes women truly happy is submission to their husbands and to the natural order. Straying from that ideal is the cause of every unhappiness. Marie Griffith, a religious scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, has found that evangelical women’s groups explicitly tell a woman that if her husband, or some other male authority figure, is making her unhappy, all she needs to do is pray and return to the Lord, and then she will find that her husband has been a loving, good man all along and that her unhappiness was all in her own head.” - Pg 55
I’ve never heard a single person ever say this. Nor have I ever heard anyone tell a woman “all she needs to do is pray and return to the Lord” This is the definition of gaslighting.

"It sets up woman’s role as one of constant sacrifice and martyrdom. Religious communities intend for women to pray for everything, not to have the power to make decisions for themselves or for their communities." - Pg 56
Again…completely wrong. Men are intended to pray just as much if not more then women. Nor do women not have power to make decisions. Wife's are to submit to husbands as husbands are to submit to God. Husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. Biblically we are to submit ourselves to one another in fear of God. He that loves his wife, loves hismself. It's not a master and slave relationship, it's a guide and follower relationship. The husband is to love his wife above all other human beings. The bible doesn’t give free rain to rule women.

“and 58 percent of those who responded said that a candidate’s stance on issues mattered most.” - Pg 58
And what exactly is someone suppose to vote for a candidate based on? Their favorite football team? What college they went to? The same applies to both sides of the street. Democrats and liberals won’t vote for Repulicans because of their stance on issues.

“What do I or any of us owe to the people we leave behind? For the well-being of my own soul, I needed to know: Did I have anything to atone for, and if so, what and how much?” - - Pg 65
Nothing…they are adults and make their own decisions.

“She lamented in her diary that she rarely got to spend time with her friend anymore because the friend always had her baby and her boyfriend in tow” - Pg 66
Yeah…that’s kinda what happens when you become adult have adult responsibilities
“This circle is the microscopic holes in a condom,” he said. “They’re microscopic, and that means they’re tiny. But guess what’s even tinier?” he asked, pointing his chalk at the white dot on the green board. “AIDS. That’s the AIDS virus, and it can get through those holes, and it will kill you. So the only way to not get AIDS is to not have sex.” - Pg 68
So…you remember this quote…word for word?!?

“The message at church was that we had to keep ourselves pure for our husbands” - Pg 68
As the exact same message was or should have been told to the boys. The bible doesn’t give free reign for boys/men to be little devils while forcing women to “keep pure”

“A 2017 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health concluded that promoting abstinence-only sex education is medically unethical and harms young people because it does not give them the tools to properly navigate their budding sexuality, or to prevent sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy.” - Pg 68
“Medically unethical” lol and what tools does it not give? It’s pretty simple really, if you don’t want to chance a pregnancy…don’t have sex. Weird how biology works.

“When girls don’t act in the ways they’re expected to or when they are perceived to be acting out, they’re punished.” - Pg 92
And if you are a good parent, you’d do the same to boys who act out. It’s called parenting.

“Receptionists … don’t make the money men do.” - Pg 117
They do if compared to men receptionists. Now do receptions make the same as men in coal mines? Of course not. But I don’t make as much as an MLB player either…is that wrong?

“They let God decide their fates.”- Pg 176
No…their decisions decided their fates. We have free will.

“what kept them from feeling that they were at the very bottom was the color of their skin.” - Pg 181
Never heard anyone say “Damn I’m poor and can’t afford to pay for the house or car or feed my family. I’m being sued by everyone I owe money to but thank God I’m White!” This sentence explains this book perfectly.

“They feel they are entitled to some measure of security and comfort based on their whiteness”- Pg 181
Uh…whiskey tango foxtrot?!!? Is this the dumbest thing I read in 2022.

“Other people told me that they’d seen her be abusive, both verbally and physically, to George as well. This is something people commonly say about domestic abuse victims, a way to deflect responsibility from the men, and it’s hard to assess the truth of it.” - Pg 188
So…obviously the people saying this were lying..right? Because as we know…it’s always the man’s fault for everything.

“women falling on bad times because men have control over them” - Pg 189
You mean…making bad decisions?

“They felt sorry for her children for having to deal with that. No one ever seemed to regret Darci’s troubles for her own sake.” - Pg 203
Because ones an adult that can make their own choices. They have free will and can consent. One’s a child that cannot. The child is at the mercy of their caretaker.

“I knew she missed her family, but she’d been at home and safe with her kids before she’d messed it up, so I blamed her a bit.” - Pg 211
You blamed her…just a bit?!?!

“They saw it solely as a matter of personal choice when, in reality, masks and vaccines were also meant to protect the people around us”- Pg 229
You spend the whole book talking about what a shit hole small town this place was…and then you expect the people there to treat covid the same as NYC? They shouldn’t be expected to. There are probably more people in 1 mile in NYC than Clinton. If you are in a highly populated area, it should handle things like Covid vastly different then wide-open small towns like Clinton.

“Later, when Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with murdering protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Clinton celebrated him as a hero, for doing what he had to do to protect property.” - Pg 230
Again..nice gaslighting. Noticed you forgot to mention he was found not guilty of all charges. And he wasn’t “protecting property” when he shot them. He was protecting himself form a skateboard and a handgun. But don’t let facts get in the way of a story..right?

“They support presidents and senators and policies that would close the borders, cut taxes to nothing, and pass initiatives preventing schools from teaching about racism accurately.” - Pg 231
Poor people want taxes cut? Breaking news at 10. And another nice gaslighting remark about teaching “racism accurately”. Which nobody has a issue with. You mean teaching the 1619 project that already had to corrected once and that multiple historians have discredited?



Moral of the book is. Men are bad. Religion is bad. Clinton is bad. All bad decisions in a woman's life is because of a man.

First of all, I appreciate and thank Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read an early copy!
This book about an acclaimed journalist who tries to understand how she escaped her small-town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not,, Through this process she tells about the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women. Darci and Potts want to move away, understandable yet at the end, she wants to move back! There was much of this book where I felt lost in the message! I felt the memoir/book was to question why some survive this kind of childhood and some do not as Monica tries to understand how her brilliant friend fell into addiction and destitution. while Monica moved up to middle class life!
I gave it 3 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for sharing this non-fiction title. Overall, a very sad book about the plight of women in rural America illuminated by the author’s personal story and relationship with her childhood best friend. More important information about the “deaths of despair” phenomenon for everyone to read, but also feels like a lamentation for a problem without a good solution at this time.

If you have ever been curious about growing up in the American South or curious about why Southern women from small town America are the way they are....this is the book for you!


Reading this book brought to life for me things that I didn't realize still happen in America today.

Family dysfunction. Addiction. Poverty. Sexism.

I was engrossed by the stories Monica shared about her life and her friends life. I didn't think I would like this book at first, then I found I could not put it down. It is a heartbreaking story at times, but it is the truth of many rural females today.

The Forgotten girls was an engrossing memoir about life in a rural town and the judgements and one track minds the people of this community have.

I could see what the author was trying to get across but then her thoughts seem to have gotten distracted while writing this story and i felt it she jumped around too much.

I felt like alot was left out. Or not explained well.

I enjoyed most of it though

Thanks Netgalley and publisher.

All thoughts and comments are my own

The Forgotten Girls is a poignant look at rural, small-town America and how some women are able to create a new life elsewhere whereas others are stuck in a place filled with disparity and lack of opportunity. I really enjoyed the way that Potts combined narrative storytelling with sociological information based in facts, which is a creative and effective way to illustrate the points she's making. I think this format is very interesting and would love to see more, but the pacing and storytelling needed a bit more boosting here.

Content warnings: child abuse/SA, abuse/SA, domestic violence, drug use

I don't think while reading this book I ever got over the feeling of hopelessness in the town but I don't think we learned anything more than we already knew about Rural America and education. This was a case study mostly in the difference of the author and her friend as opposed to an answer to the direct questions of why.

3.5

There were parts of this book that were so heartbreaking and so fascinating, but I did lose interest at points. I loved reading Darci's story. I wish there were a bit more commentary throughout the book on why and how this happens in towns like Clinton, which the author did explore at the end of the book.

3.5 stars rounded up

The blurb for "The Forgotten Girls" perfectly pinpoints the question Monica Potts sets out to answer: "An acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped her small-town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, and, in the process, illuminates the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women all over America."

Potts' family in Clinton, Arkansas, has seen many of these "deaths of despair" in Clinton Arkansas. Her best friend from childhood, Darci, grew up in marginally better circumstances than Monica. Her family had two incomes, and Monica admits that Darci was more charismatic, smarter, more curious than she was. The two girls planned to leave town and go to college together, but by sophomore year in high school Darci was already on a different path. Why?

Potts believes that the reason may have to do with the fact that Monica's mother had lived elsewhere and seen another way of life. She endlessly encouraged her daughters to make a plan and get out. The family scraped together money for summer programs and college applications. The local high school offered minimal college counseling, generally focused on local state colleges, so her mom encouraged her to explore any college names she heard. Her family was also not Southern Baptist with its embrace of early childbearing and belief in the role of women as modest helpmeets.

Perhaps Kathy Potts took her desire to get and keep Monica and her sister Courtney out of Van Buren County a little far. She did not tell them about their father's illness until the very end because she didn't want them moving back to help her care for him. Darci has no such encouragement.

"Forgotten Girls" is written with heart, as Monica tries to understand where the brilliant friend she still loves so dearly swerved toward addiction and destitution.

Potts develops theories for why she made it to the middle class while Darci did not, but there are no answers. Her heartbreak for her friend shimmers on every page, but no matter what she does to help, there is no answer and seemingly no way to change course.

This is an engrossing book, and a maddening one. There don't seem to be any programs or plans to broaden anyone's view or guide children in how to make the most of their gifts. Such waste.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the free ARC of this book. My review is posted on Goodreads. I will share the link below.