This is a pretty creepy book. I wasn't sure about it at the start - I wasn't keen on the style of Emma's narrative (where's the dialogue?) but as you go through the story it matters less and you understand more. Both women want their heads knocking together though, in fact most of the characters do, but it is an interesting read. You want to know what's happened and what's going to happen and I was surprised by the conclusion. There were a couple of outstanding niggles (who was the old guy in his socks, eating the crunchie??) but all in all I found it an easy and compelling read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC of The Girl Before.

This was an okay book, did have a twist in it, which is always nice.

Do you like rules?
Lots of ridiculous rules?

Do you like answering hundreds of multiple answer questions that test your personality?

Do you like someone tracking EVERYTHING you do....aaaaaaalll the time?

Eh?Eh? Anyone? Buler? Buler?


Nah me either.

But apparently once you meet the fabulous landlord you will be all about the *YAS*!

I was so very glad the author did not romanticize his crazy ass. I am so done with that sad story.
I couldn't get into either line of the story. We hear from both Emma (aka then) and Jane (aka now). And while Emma was not a likeable character I found Jane to be extremely flat.
I do have to admit the story kept me reading. I wanted to see where all of this ended up. The 'mystery ' was resolved and while it was a plausible resolution it was not the twist I was waiting for.....and then there was the 'true twist' at the end....

Really? Did we have to go there?

It was not good.

I do believe Delaney has promise though. This story just didn't do it for me in the end. I do have to give the stars for keeping me reading. It would have been three until that last 10% or so, I could have done without that.

This book is great in that it is trying to trick you. This is a book that is, possibly, not realistic, but I like that. That does not make me put down a book. Like my family said, If that did not happen (no matter how ridiculous) there would not be a movie (or book). So, if that is an issue for you, you have come to the wrong place.

As always we are forced to pick a side in a way. There are those characters who we love, and those we love to hate. Yes, this is by design, and follows the formula for other works that have been very successful in recent years. Many people like the formula, I like thinking outside the box, but with this book it just "clicked" for me. The formula that so many other authors use that drives me insane did not bother me. I think it is because I just loved this scenario so much, that I looked past that.

The story will suck you in. Like many mystery novels, it starts out with a slow pace that picks up as the pages turn. It will build and build, until it is like a train that will not slow down, and you do not want to. You are enjoying the ride and cannot wait to get to the end. You are sad when it is over, but so happy to hear what happens. That is a sign of a good book for me. When you cannot wait for it to end in a good way.

I loved this book and getting to know these characters. I cannot wait to read more from this author.

It took me awhile to get into this book. I stopped a few times and read something else. Once I actually got interested, it seemed to take off. I wanted to know what happened and I spent a few nights staying up later than I should to try to get to the end. I would recommend it.

I was expecting something different than I got with this book, especially after all the hype. After a while, it just read like Fifty Shades of Grey and not a clever thriller. It was fast-paced, but that is the best I can say about it, unfortunately.

Jane is looking for a new place to live as she wants to start over. She has had a personal tragedy that she is trying to recover from. The house she will be leasing is owned by a control freak. The questions asked on the application are odd, if not outrageous. As Jane lives there, she wonders about the girl before who leased this home. Will Jane find out?

The author writes the two girls experiences in alternating chapters. The characters are well described. He makes Jane and Emma appear to exactly alike but they aren't. Why. Even though the house is modern it feels creepy and gothic. This is a psychological suspense story.

I wanted to love THE GIRL BEFORE. I definitely did at first, even when I realized it sounded like a book I read last year. The only things that kept me determined to finish this book was 1) what actually happened to Emma, and 2) I wanted to learn more about the house itself.

Told in alternate POVs/timelines we learn about how then:Emma and now:Jane come to live at One Folgate Street and how similar the women seem. The house is an exclusive rental with a 200 question personalty test and an even longer list of rules. No things on the floor, no pictures on the wall, no pets, no kids, no curtains, no rugs, and much more. The house should always be open to tours and architects, and you will be required to submit to impromptu questions about yourself or certain parts of the electrical system will shut down. Once we get passed all that, there is the matter of the handsome owner who may or may not have killed his wife and child. Emma seems similar to Jane, which sends Jane on a mission to find out what happened. he mysterious death is just the beginning.

This was a really quick read for me. I found myself really liking both Emma and Jane. There were pretty similar sounding at first, but as the story went on things changed. Neither of these girls is really likeable, although I did feel really sorry for Jane. The love interest for both of these women was horrible. A man who absolutely won’t commit and plays games in relationships. He would have had to be more than just good-looking to be worth all the trouble.

The house has some really cool features and I loved learning about them all. An app on your phone can control the house, which is nothing really new. This house also learns from you and will remember things like what temperature you like the water in the shower to be. This house, through the app, can also tell you if you need to pick up more milk or eggs, since it can sense what is in your fridge. While all that sounds cool, I was left thinking about what a violation of privacy not having curtains, and almost certainly having cameras in the house would be.

The twists were okay for me. The pacing of this story was excellent until about 60% where the characters started to show their true colors and the story started to unravel for me. It didn’t go anywhere near where I expected it. I hated almost everyone by the end of the story and felt certain the house was indeed cursed.

In brighter news, I heard this was to be made into a movie directed by Ron Howard. THE GIRL BEFORE will probably play out well in a movie and I will definitely watch it. This was a pretty engrossing mystery, but be prepared to change your mind about people.

I received a free copy of this book, from the publisher and author, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the publisher, Ballantine Books, the author, J.P. Delaney, and NetGalley.

One twist after another, it was like they never stopped! Just trying to keep up with which plot line was enough, let alone distinguishing which twist I was following put the novel over the edge. Told from the perspectives of Emma (before) and Jane (current), then a single chapter from Astrid (the next tenant)

The chapters flip flop from Emma to Jane, most of the time I had to figure out which character I was reading about because their stories were so similar. It was like reading the same novel at the same time, with very slight changes. The lack of depth into the female characters made parts of this novel hard to get through. It seemed as though the author tried to ass a layer of depth to them by providing more into their back story, but it flopped.

The 'rules' of the house at One Folgate Street seemed like a great plot line, something that could have been explored more. It was a main feature as to why these young women wanted to live there, but soon became a side show once they were settled in. What started out as a "what happened to all the women who have lived in this house?" turned into a "will the comparisons ever end?"

The main point that I could not shake throughout the entire novel was the fact that the lives of these two women could not be this similar, not even in a novel. A novel that had so much potential, that started with so much potential, did not live you to that potential.

3.8 - some bits of the plot were too far-fetched, and I kept confusing some of the characters with their "similar" counterparts... but a good beach read thriller

If I wasn't a reviewer for Netgalley, I probably would not have picked up this book if I was in a bookstore or library. However, I found myself in a European city with no TV and no internet, the book was already downloaded to my Kindle and so I read it.

The premise is farfetched and the writing is not great. With nothing better to do, I read the entire book. Each chapter has the voice of one of two women. Two overlapping stories are revealed, one happening before the other although it takes a few chapters to figure that out. Besides the two women, there are three more main characters--one of them being the house that is the center of all their lives. According to the author's imagination, the house has won awards for creativity and beauty. Both women are attracted to it, want to live there and are willing to go through an unbelievable application process for that privilege.

Slowly it is revealed how a damaged psyche will respond to a controlling persona. People die. Were they killed or did they die under normal and accidental circumstances? One of the women cannot hide her curiosity and becomes a minor detective trying to figure out the history of the house, of the original inhabitants and the woman that lived there before her.

None of the characters is fleshed out very well and the ending becomes obvious. The book also verges on to erotica territory when trying to explain the attraction of the women to the architect of the house. All in all, if you have nothing better to do for your summer vacation or if you are stuck somewhere with only your kindle, this can be a good time consumer. It is not a good book.

An extremely quick, fast-paced read. Chapters alternate between Emma (then) and Jane (now). I liked the juxtaposition of their two personalities. Chapters were extremely short, especially in the beginning, which is in part why this novel was such a fast read. I've heard it described as a cross between Fifty Shades of Gray and Gone Girl-- I'd agree with that. I enjoyed it as a light fun read up until the ending, which offered no shock or twist but was in fact very anticlimactic and slightly confusing.

I received The Girl Before from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Emma and Jane live in a most unusual house at different times. As their stories unfold in linear fashion, we learn how the stunning architectural structure affects their damaged lives. Living in the house comes with a price - strict rules to live by, rules that prove challenging. Both Emma and Jane embark into the challenge from problematic pasts with hopes of escaping what haunts them.

While both Emma and Jane experience peace and pain in their new surroundings, the relationship they both have with the house's owner and architect plays central to the girl before, his wife, whose story is told indirectly. What, from outside and in, seems perfect is not always what it appears to be.

The story experiences, what at first comes across as quirky writing, until later when its revealed it's all a part of the act... a performance hidden from the reader as well. Readers are well rewarded for not jumping to offense when encountering those seemingly "bumps" in the story.

With the aspect of the perfect house in its story, we get to know the house and its story as well as its two inhabitants. The story is well laid out in doling out a bread crumb trail to put the story together between the two points of view, and brings into focus its conclusion with nice twists.

I liked that this book switched back and forth between two characters and times, keeping me interested right from the start. The more I learned about Emma, the less I liked her character. It didn’t take away from my overall feeling of the book though. It was something different and I enjoyed reading it!

Bottom Line: If you are looking for something with a little mystery and suspense but nothing too crazy that keeps you up at night, hiding under the covers…then this would be a good read.

Rating: 4/5

** I received a copy of The Girl Before from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are of my own.**

Great psychological thriller. Kept me guessing until the end...which is the best kind. Themes: perfectionism, self-acceptance, grief, and trust.

I was hooked on The Girl Before from the very beginning. The short chapter writing style flipping between Jane and Emma kept me wanting to read more. I loved how the story continued to get creepier as Jane's story begins to mirror Emma's so closely.

I sometimes got mixed up with which girl I was reading about because I was so engrossed in the book, but I thought the author did a good job of differentiating between the two girls and their distinct personalities.

Jane Cavendish is looking for a fresh start. She is recovering from the loss of a child and thinks that a fresh start is just what she needs. One Fulgate Street in London is a home with a history. It's owner is the world renowned architect, Edward Monkford, and he has a set of rules and requirements for anybody who inhabits his homes. There is an extensive application process that starts with the demand "Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life." Jane passes the rigorous application process and now must adhere to rules such as "no books" and "no clutter". The house is fully automated right down to a survey she has to regularly take so the "house" can gauge her progress towards being a better person. The house will even withhold services like water in the shower until she completes the survey.
One day she notices a man leaving flowers at her door and Jane discovers that a former tenant died tragically. Emma moved to One Fulgate Street after the flat she shared with her boyfriend, Simon, was broken into. Jane becomes invested in Emma and her story while becoming intimately involved with Edward Monkord. Once she becomes acutely aware of his control issues she realizes that there might be more to Emma's death than she first believed. Will Jane be able to get to the truth before she becomes the next victim to the One Fulgate Street house?

The Girl Before is one of the most unique books that I have read recently. At the heart of the story is a bit of a love triangle, that isn't new, but One Fulgate Street is a setting for a new millennium. Home automation is becoming more and more popular, but Edward Monkford takes it to a scary extreme. The fact that he can control the water in the shower for an off-site location should be utterly terrifying to anybody with a landlord. The list of rules he assigns every tenant is so over-the-top that I can't imagine anybody being willing to agree to the rigidity. In the case of Jane and Emma, I think they agreed because other areas of their lives were out of control and they craved that rigidity to bring order to the world. The story is told in alternating voices - Then: Emma and Now: Jane. The further you get into the book you realize that there are some seriously unbalanced characters in this story. There is a bit of a revelation at the end that through me for a loop, but it didn't shock me that much. --CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS -

Bottom line - The Girl Before is a cleverly written suspense novel. The fact that women willingly submit to such a controlling environment is quite fascinating and the exciting mystery is secondary, in my opinion. If you are looking for a unique thriller - The Girl Before is for you.

Details:
The Girl Before by JP Delaney (a pseudonym for Tony Strong)
On Goodreads
Pages: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: 1/24/2017
Buy it Here!

You'll need to suspend disbelief with J.P. Delaney's The Girl Before (Ballantine, digital galley), which is full of coincidences about the successive attractive tenants of a control-freak architect's custom London mansion. Neither Emma nor Jane is willing to look the gift house in the mouth, even though the rental agreement has about 200 ridiculous rules -- no books, no pictures on the wall, no rugs on the floor -- and also poses intrusive ethical questions. Really?
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever