I didn't realize it when I requested it, but there is a lot of hype about this book. Ron Howard has apparently bought the film rights. It makes sense, because I can definitely see it as a movie. The story switches between two different characters' viewpoints, and it took me a while to remember which was which (one is "then" and one is "now"), but I was fine once I got into it. If you like suspenseful books with interesting/crazy set-up's (I can never step away from a good set-up), you would probably like this.

I really enjoyed this book! The Girl Before kept me curious and intrigued the entire time, and I really didn't see some of the end reveals coming! Two absolutely took me by surprise! I'll mention that I don't read very many of these types of books, so perhaps that's part of why the twists and turns surprised me when they haven't surprised others, but regardless, I thought the mystery was handled very well!

I found both women to be fascinating--the devastations they were trying to overcome, the personalities that emerged, their interactions with the home and its infamous architect. The parallel story structure worked extremely well for me and I loved that technique. Not all of their actions were entirely believable, but I was so sucked into the world of the story I didn't really care and I didn't find it distracting!

If you want to read a fun, easy mystery that reminded me of Fifty Shades meets Gone Girl, then definitely give this one a chance!

Emma and Jane are drawn into a web of deception when they both end up as tenants at One Folgate Street. Emma was there before Jane, and both stories unfold through the course of the book. What they have in common, in addition to being tenants, is their relationship with its designer.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. But, it was hard to care about the main characters. In fact, more than once I had to skip back to the beginning of each chapter to remind myself which character was narrating? Jane or Emma? Nothing about their voices registered to me as individuals.

Even after they both expressed a desire to give up their freedom to the "housekeeper" (and to the mysterious Edward Monkford) they weren't terribly interesting. They both have their reasons for surrendering, and those reasons made me less sympathetic to them. Unfortunately, I only kept reading to see if my theories about the resolution would be correct. They weren't. So, I can honestly say the book wasn't predictable. But I still didn't like the characters and didn't feel invested in them.

The concept of a house that is programmed (and also conditions its inhabitants to behave in a certain way) is compelling. But that turns out to be just a backdrop for the lies and deceptions of everyone involved.

I think comparisons to Gone Girl and 50 Shades are apt since this book does come across like a mash-up of the two. I just wish there had been more to make me really enjoy it.

This review originally ran on Brightly:
One Folgate Street is a modern architectural masterpiece. Designed by an award-winning, enigmatic architect, Edward Monkford, it is all clean lines with no clutter and state-of-the-art technology (its built-in computer system is aptly named “Housekeeper”). With a well-below market value rent, the trade-off to living there is the rigorous application process and the contract’s looooooong list of rules. But for the two women who take center stage in JP Delaney’s psychological thriller, it is worth it.

The Girl Before follows the women’s experiences with the house in parallel. Both women come to the house after experiencing tragedy. Jane, the current resident, discovers that the previous resident, Emma, died in the house. The chapters alternate between Jane’s story and Emma’s story as Jane tries to figure out what happened to Emma. The house itself is also a character, central to the plot. It creates a sense of tranquility and safety at points, but also elicits fear and claustrophobia along the way. There were moments in the book that brought thoughts of Stephen King’s Christine to mind: Is the house itself somehow involved?

The Girl Before features one of fiction’s current trends: the unreliable narrator (see: Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train). As the women’s stories unfold, we begin to question their truth. Delaney also does something interesting to pull readers into the book — interspersed between chapters are questions from the arduous questionnaire that the applicants have to fill out. The questions are related to what follows in the story, but they also cause the reader to pause and reflect. How would you answer? How do you think the two women would answer? Why would Monkford ask that question? It is an interesting device that would also make for great book club discussions.

With enough doubt and twists to make the reader constantly question their assumptions — some obvious red herrings, some true possibilities — The Girl Before is hard to put down once you start it.

I tried so hard to get through the book. I just wasn't able to get into the book. I didn't finish it .

The premise of the book sounds intriguing. I liked the switch from each character but I did not care for the fact that what was happening kept mirroring each other. It was like reading the same thing twice. The whole set up of the house seemed too far fetched for me and the ending was annoying. Even if the owner of the apartment was not the guilty one, I couldn't make the connection back to the boyfriend. Nice idea for a story line but the connections didn't not work. I'm personally talking a break from these "girl" books.

This is a great psychological thriller about how a home environment can change (or is it control?) you. It's narrated from the alternating points of view of a former and of a current tenant in the very regimented, ultra minimalist rental property of a renowned architect. What really happened to the girl before? And whose fault was it? Read and find out!

The Girl Before is edgy, twisty and deliciously creepy. The books is about two women, Emma and Jane who, few years apart, move into high-tech, one of a kind, architectural wonder of a house on 1 Folgate Street. Both fall in love with the house and the enigmatic architect who designed it. The house is like a living, thinking organism, it changes both Emma's and Jane's lives and it is fascinating and creepy at the same time. But 1 Folgate Street has a dramatic history and Emma dies mysteriously in the house. Now it seems that Jane's experience follows a very similar pattern to Emma's.
The Girl Before is unputdownable, I stayed up well past midnight because I couldn't wait to discover how Jane's story ends and if she suffers the same fate as Emma. There are a lot of twists and turns that kept me guessing till the last page.

Maybe that’s the real point of The Rules, as we’ve already dubbed them. Maybe it isn’t simply that the architect’s a control freak who’s worried we’ll mess up his beautiful house. Maybe it’s a kind of experiment. An experiment in living.

The story of One Folgate Street is told through the two alternating narratives of Emma, set in the past and Jane, set in the present. It begins when each of these women are searching for a place to live- Emma, along with her boyfriend Simon, to escape the terror of her previous home following an alleged burglary and Jane to escape the grief she's experiencing following a stillbirth. Both women are brought to the house and are simultaneously in awe of the design and technology and the massive list of rules.



“There are about two hundred stipulations in all. But it’s the final one that causes the most problems.”

Neither are deterred and we quickly see what the house will mean for them both. They grow accustomed to the way of life the house requires. They also grow closer to it's architect, Edward Monkford. He seduces them with an unusually practiced hand and he charms them with his distinct personality that is echoed in his design and belief



Perhaps architecture isn’t really about buildings at all, he says. We accept that town planning is a kind of architecture, after all. Motorway networks, airports— these too, at a stretch. But what about technology? What about that invisible city in which we all stroll, or lurk, or play: the Internet? What about the frameworks of our lives, the bonds that tie us, our aspirations and our baser desires? Are these not also structures, in a way?

The affairs become tangled due, in part, to Emma's resistance to conform and Jane's discoveries. Not long after Jane moves in she is accosted by a man leaving flowers at her door. What she learns about the previous tenant both shocks her and spurs her to uncover the secrets of One Folgate Street.



He looks straight at me. His eyes are haggard. “She was murdered. The coroner recorded an open verdict but everyone— even the police— knew she’d been killed. First he poisoned her mind, then he killed her.”

However, it becomes clear that things are not quite what they seem at first leading Emma into a police investigation and Jane to question her decision.



I’ve never found One Folgate Street a frightening place. But now the silence and the emptiness seem to take on a more sinister hue. Ridiculous, of course; like being scared after hearing a ghost story. But all the same, I select the brightest light setting and go around checking for— what? Not intruders, obviously. But for some reason the house no longer feels quite so protective.

Rapid fire revelations clarify the numerous scenarios that play out throughout the story. Along the way, Emma and Jane are fleshed out and their reasons for moving to One Folgate Street add dimension to this domestic thriller. The Girl Before goes beyond the generic suspense and reveals the deeper psychology behind grief are our need to cope.



Freud talks about something he called repetition compulsion. That is, a pattern in which someone acts out the same sexual psychodrama over and over again, with different people allotted the same unchanging roles. At a subconscious or even a conscious level, they’re hoping to rewrite the outcome, to perfect whatever it was that went wrong before. Inevitably, though, the same flaws and imperfections they themselves bring to the relationship destroy it, in exactly the same way.

A woman discovers that the previous tenant of her home died a tragic death, and her interactions with the architect/landlord of the house convinces her something odd happened before she moved in. The more she finds out, the more she realizes she may be in danger herself. Author JP Delaney shares the story of the two women and the man who links them in the fast paced but ultimately disappointing novel The Girl Before.

Emma wants to move out of her London flat as soon as possible. After surviving a break-in at her current home, she just can’t face staying there any longer than necessary. When the realtor shows Emma and her boyfriend the home at One Folgate Street, Emma feels the home calling to her.

The clean lines and austere décor only become more intriguing when she and her boyfriend receive the tenant application that has more than 200 questions. The rules for the home confound Emma—no trash cans or books; no shampoo left out after a shower—but they also make her curious. Her boyfriend doesn’t understand the curiosity aspect of the house, however, and eventually the two break up. After a whirlwind relationship with Edward Monkford, the architect-cum-landlord, Emma dies under tragic but unsettling circumstances.

After delivering a stillborn infant, Jane wants to get away from everything in her life that reminds her of her baby girl. She feels the same draw to One Folgate Street that Emma did, and Jane takes the questions on the application as a challenge. Most never make it past that first application, but Jane does and she has the opportunity to meet Edward in his office before the final decision.

Jane finds herself attracted to him, and when her application to live at One Folgate Street is approved she realizes the attraction must have been mutual. Her guess is correct. One day Edward approaches Jane for what he calls an unfettered relationship. No strings attached; no commitments. They simply stay together until one of them decides the situation no longer makes sense.

Despite her initial hesitation, Jane agrees. As she spends more time with Edward, however, she realizes that some of his actions must be motivated by his relationship with Emma. Jane begins to question whether Emma’s death really was an accident. She’s afraid to find out, because she doesn’t want to know whether she’ll be next.

Author JP Delaney gives readers a book that moves at a breakneck pace. Telling the story in chapters that alternate between Emma and Jane’s points of view, Delaney pushes the story forward in an engaging effort. Readers won’t want to stop moving through the novel until they find out all of Emma’s secrets and how Jane handles the fallout from them.

Unfortunately, Delaney doesn’t fulfill the promises he makes in the first handful of chapters of the book. Edward Monkford’s entrance and character arc suggest someone worthy of Fifty Shades of Grey; in the end his entire outlook falls flat. Midway through the book, one of the two main women completely flips her entire profile. Delaney may have wanted to create an unreliable narrator similar to Gone Girl, but the transition isn’t nearly as smooth.

Ultimately Delaney builds the entire story up and then lets it fall off a cliff. Instead of making a terrific smash, it flutters to the ground in a heap of feathers. The end is just as disappointing as the beginning is fascinating.

I recommend readers Bypass The Girl Before.

This book was an interesting read. The mystery kept me guessing, the concept of the house kept me intrigued. Definitely recommend.

3 1/2 stars. I enjoyed the book but I found the ending to be lacking. I also found it confusing to decipher dialect during the "Emma" chapters. I'm assuming the lack of quotation marks was a way to distinguish the two female characters from each other but it took away from the story as I had to read many of them several times once I figured out who was speaking and what they were saying. Much too confusing. A different font a la Jodi Picoult would have been better.
All in all, it was a good story and it kept me interested.
I read this book for free by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A woman named Jane answers an advertisement for an affordable apartment, but the building’s architect has some strange requirements: minimalist rules and limits on possessions. Soon, Jane discovers that a woman eerily similar to herself lived and died in the apartment before her, and Jane may be heading down the same path.

I found myself engrossed in this taut thriller from the first page. The focus on the environment (the strange house on Folgate Street) gave the story a fascinating twist. I can’t say I was particularly enamored with any of the characters, but for the most part they felt real and unique. I enjoyed the back-and-forth timelines – they added layers to the plot and kept the tension high, always posing more questions for the reader. Overall, this was a well-written, quick read perfect for mystery lovers.

One Folgate Street an award winning high tech property in London, was designed by architect Edward. He is a minimalist and is very choosy about who he will lease the house too. The tenants have to go through a rigorous questionnaire and if approved have to abide by a set of rules to live in the house for cheap rent.
The book is narrated by alternate POVs, Emma the girl who lived before and Jane the present resident of One Folgate Street. Both have gone through traumatic events in their lives and think the basic no nonsense approach may give them some stability. Emma wants to find a safe place to live after being burglarized and attacked in her home. She is approved to live at the house and moves in with her boyfriend Simon. Jane gave birth to a stillborn and is looking to find some kind of solace in the stark walls of the house. Both Jane and Emma bear a striking resemblance to each other and to Edwards late wife. Jane soon discovers that Emma suffered an unfortunate accident in the house resulting in her untimely death and starts investigating. Was it really just an accident or were there other mitigating factors resulting in Emma’s death?
There were some aspects of this book that I did not like but it was still an interesting concept . The long list of rules did remind me of Fifty Shades of Grey but that’s where the similarity ends. Overall a good read with decent suspense and will rate it 3 ½ stars.
Many thanks to the publisher & NetGalley for this advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and fair review
This and more reviews at https://chloesbooksblog.wordpress.com/

Okay, this one is good guys! I honestly didn't expect this one to be so good. I have read so many books lately that try to pull off the twists and mystery but just can't do it. THIS ONE DOES IT. The creepy factor is there and the crazy character secrets abound. I couldn't put it down!

Unfortunately I ignored the negative reviews and I've paid the price. The beginning grabs your attention right away but then just drifts into a boring mess. Although this is labeled as a thriller, I found that to be entirely false. I was left with the feeling of, what did I just read. I do not recommend this book.

This is a thriller that exceeds every review you heard about it. Ron Howard is directing the movie based on this book and I cannot wait. This is a psychological thriller that defies every other thriller I have read. It is so well crafted, so well designed that it is pure catnip to the reader. The last 100 pages are thrilling and were a surprise ending to me. I will not give the premises of the story away suffice to say this is a "adult" thriller,, it does have some sex and violence. It is a cleverly crafted story of two women both renting in a unusual house . Very exciting read I highly recommend.

A super quick read. Interesting concept and I liked that one of the women turned out to be an unreliable narrator. Some of the dialogue was trite and I felt like the characters could have been fleshed out more. I can easily see this being made into a mini-series or movie and it almost seemed like it was written with that in mind. All in all, not a great book but fast paced and would make an afternoon on the beach or a plane/train ride much more pleasant.