I was originally attracted to this book because of the cover and description. It gave me indie vibes.

This is a slow burn thriller. The author is subtle yet clever and it has a very cat and mouse vibe going on.

However, multiple times it left me confused and I struggled getting into it and sticking with it.

I do recommend this book to those who love thrillers.

Thank you to the publisher and to netgalllery

I have a distinct memory as a high school student of finding The Light of Falling Stars at a bookstore while visiting my grandmother. I remember buying it and instantly becoming obsessed with it. I hadn't seen anything from J. Robert Lennon in awhile so when I saw this on NetGalley I was very excited to check it out.

It has been many years since Jane has had contact with either her twin sister Lila or their mother. She's established a life for herself with her husband and daughter, trying to heal from her traumatic past. When Lila reaches out to tell Jane she thinks she knows where their mother is, Jane decides to meet Lila and travel together to find their mother.

The narrative is split between present day Jane, Jane and Lila as teenagers, and their father. The whole story is slow to be revealed, but eventually we did find out everything and I thought the suspense and tension was enough to keep me engaged and wanting to read more.

J. Robert Lennon writes women really well -- he captured Jane's inner life and motivation really well. So much of this book is about the relationship between sisters, and between mothers and daughters, and all of that is captured in a realistic way.

Reading this makes me want to go back and read some of the J. Robert Lennon books I've missed in the past, and revisit The Light of Falling Stars. I will definitely check out another book about Jane and Lila - I was rooting for both of them by the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for the advanced copy of this book!

This was an interesting plot following sisters and their quest to locate their mother. The story jumps between the past and the present. I enjoyed the dynamic between the sisters but the parents' relationship could have used some development. It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

Hard girls was a slow moving book for me. This is a story of the pool family. And their consequences from each other lives.

Thank you Novel Suspects and Mulholland for the review ebook of Hard Girls via netgalley.
This is one that I wanted to love, the cover art and plot about sisters and a missing mother and a complicated past/childhood... all wins for me in themes. And the writing is stylish, moody, and atmospheric, there is a a lot of solid tension within the plot and a little cat/mouse vibe at times and a lot of the past timeline part of story was well done.
But for me Novel Suspects got in its own way a bit, a little too heavy on dual timelines and heavy on details that made the book feel slow, not slow burn which I love. This was one I put down a bit more than I planned to, tried out on audio as well, but often felt a little muddled with keeping track of the plot and keeping my own interest strong.

Hard Girls is an intriguing novel in one of my favorite sub-genres: espionage thriller. I love a good spy thriller. This is a spy thriller crossed with a female-centric sleuth mystery laced with suspense. (Throw in a splash of sibling fiction, too).

Hard Girls has a great story. It reminds me of a more mature and less magical The Wilderwomen or Where the Echoes Die, both stories where two sisters who have grown apart go on road trips to search for their (respective) missing mothers. In all three of three books you’ve got a sister who’s more in the know than the other and one who’s a little more jaded than the other. I’d say Hard Girls has more realistic consequences at stake than the other two titles, but I really can’t speak to that. I suspect some folks at Langley would have to do something to me if I knew!

Where Hard Girls wore thin with me was the frequency of timeline switching. This narrative device is a useful tool in many ways, but I felt like it was used as too much of an expositional crutch in this book. Instead of working to fuel the present-day timeline it seemed more often to just explain the past. The result? Glorified flashbacks. I’m of the firm opinion that 95% of the time flashbacks are lazy writing. In the end, it didn’t matter how well-written the past-timeline chapters were, because they didn’t fuel the present-timeline story. They disrupted the pacing of the story. I also felt like the chapters from Harry’s POV either could’ve been eliminated or his part of the story could’ve been dealt with differently. The story should’ve belonged to Jane and Lila.

Other than that, the novel is engaging, imaginative, compelling, and a solid read.

I was provided the eARC of this title by NetGalley and the author. I was provided a finished copy of this title by Mulholland Books and the Novel Suspects Insider’s Club. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: Espionage Thriller/Suspense Mystery

Hard Girls opens with Jane Pool’s quiet and seemingly normal existence upended by an email. On the surface it looks like spam but Jane knows it’s not. Thus begins a chain of events that take Jane and her twin sister Lila on a journey to answer questions about and come to terms with their past. Told in dual timelines between the past and the present and through the perspective of the twins and their father we uncover the past they have tried to bury and learn the story of who they are and where they come from.

I read Lennon’s book Subdivision and loved it. I’m not sure I understood it but it is the kind of strange and wonderful book I love. When I learned he had a new novel I was eager to pick it up even though it is billed as a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and a domestic suspense which is not what I normally read. I’ve looked at the reviews and they are mixed. I can see why. If you go into this book expecting a page turning, hang on the edge or your seat, fast paced thriller or suspense novel you will be disappointed. Maybe we gravitate toward what we are most interested in when we read, but I found this book as more of an exploration of navigating who we are and how our families and our past shape this and how we come to terms with a difficult or uncertain past. Yes this is framed by what you would see in a thriller or suspense novel, but I saw that as a device to explore the deeper themes of self discovery, self acceptance, and closure. The chase is in many ways about finding oneself and making peace with where we come from and the actions we’ve taken.

This book includes depictions and explorations of topics that may be triggering so please check warnings (rape). This does lead to some exploration of being a victim when someone expressed interest in their perpetrator and how one navigates feelings of responsibility. Overall I felt very engaged with the story. There were enough unanswered questions and pieces to put together that I wasn’t able to figure out on my own that kept me wanting to read.

Thank you @muhollandbooks @netgalley for the #gifted eARC.

A creative plot, descriptive writing, good pacing, and interesting characters make this book hard to put down, from start to finish! Growing up, Jane Pool and her (fraternal) twin sister Lila were used to fending for themselves, having an absent-minded professor for a father and a largely (literally) absent mother who left altogether when the twins were 12 years old. Now an adult with a daughter of her own that she has difficultly connecting with, Jane fears she is more like her mother than she wants to admit. When Lila resurfaces after years with no contact, telling Jane she has a lead on their mother's whereabouts, Jane joins her sister on a trek to confront the woman who abandoned them in an effort to make peace with her past so she can move forward with her own life. Hard Girls is mostly told from Jane's POV, alternating between the past and present. It's part mystery, part thriller/spy story, part family drama, and part Thelma & Louise-like journey of discovery, and entirely enjoyable!

This was a solid read.

Two sisters who haven't seen each other in a decade reunite in an effort to track down their mother who abandoned them as teens.

This was a cat and mouse thriller that has international spy vibes. Lila and Jane team up to find their mother, who doesn't want to be found. I liked how the book flips between the girls' teen years and the present, but I felt like it could have been two separate books because there was a lot going on.

There were a few points where I felt like relationships weren't fully explained or hashed out, which left me a little confused about some of the characters' behaviors. For instance, Jane's marriage and relationship with her mother-in-law were both volatile, but only lightly touched on.

There were no huge plot twists, as this was more of a chase with the story of what happened unfolding, but it was an interesting enough read.

This is a story of twin sisters separated by a tragic event in their adolescence; so a story in two timelines. I enjoyed the storyline but would have been more content with a bit more development on a few of the characters. I wanted to learn more about the protagonist's daughter and mother to understand better some parallels that were alluded to. I would recommend.

Such an unusual, high octane and entertaining family drama involving a CIA operative turned drug Kingpin mother and her two daughters who have an equally gray code of morals and reunite to track her down and get answers.

Full of complex characters, lots of action and unexpected twists, this book kept me guessing right to the end but was extremely enjoyable and good on audio too. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

Jane joins her estranged twin to track down their often absent and mercurial mother.

I love stories about twins and I enjoyed their reconnection and getting to know both characters. I especially enjoyed the childhood timeline and how they grew up with the sometimes absent mother. I was really interested in seeing how that developed. I wasn’t as interested in the modern timeline and felt it was really bogged down with details and a slower pace.

“He had loved her passionately, without reservation. But he never understood her. She was fierce, mercurial.”

Hard Girls comes out 2/20.

I liked a lot about this, but also felt like a lot was left on the table, like I wanted more.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

I wanted to love this so much but I couldn't concentrate after about 40%. I finished the book but I couldn't tell you much about it. I had no connection to the story and didn't feel a pull to root for everything to work out. I really appreciate the opportunity to read this for my honest opinion!

DNF @ 20%

""Harry was desperately attracted to her immediately; she had an arboreal air, furtive yet self-assured, like an extremely sexy deer."

sometimes you just read a line or paragraph in a book that gives you the ick, and that was this line for me LOL. this was at 13% in the book so I decided to keep on reading and give it a bit more of a shot but I was just not feeling it.

The description sounded great and the cover was very eye catching but ultimately I wasn't into the writing and didn't begin to care for any of the characters. This wasn't bad, it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Mulholland books for sharing a digital copy for me to read, as always opinions are my own.

Agh, this is such a bummer. I was really looking forward to this one and couldn't get past the first 40 pages. Everyone enjoys a slow burn from time to time, but I just couldn't get into this one at all. I am still very thankful to the publisher and author for sending this one my way, but it just wasn't for me.

Two women looking for their mother (and themselves) should have been a book perfect for me. It wasn't. Oddly enough I didn't care whether they found their mom or not. I wanted more from the earlier time line. And by the end of the book, I didn't so much care about that either because not enough attention was being paid to it. I wanted to see more how these young women's characters were being developed into what we see in the current timeline. But either way, the story seemed rather disconnected and implausible. I mean, it is fiction so it can be whatever it wants, but what it wanted didn't work for me. And rather than say it is a bad book, I think it wasn't the book for me.

Estranged twins team up to uncover the mystery of what happened to their mom.

The writing style here just wasn’t for me. I struggled to get into it. I think maybe if there had been a prologue to draw us in, I would’ve been more intrigued.

A fascinating and engaging story of two sisters and the bonds that cannot be broken. This story jumps back in for5 between past and present and that really amplifies the drama. Jane and Lila are twins that couldn’t be more alike or more different depending on the moment. From a trouble childhood to an estranged adult life their ability to come back together for answers is something truly powerful.

Thank you NetGalley for this advance copy. Sadly, this one really didn't work for me.

I loved the cover and synopsis and so looked forward to reading this one. I was immediately sucked in and around 20% this just became convoluted and muddied for me. It felt like we were trying to do TOO MUCH, and the "thriller" aspect of a thriller was lost. This was more of a slow burn of suspense that never really even felt that suspenseful?

Sadly this won't be a favorite of mine, but I appear to be in the minority!