The Girl Before
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4.4 • 16 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this powerful psychological suspense debut, when a woman’s life is shattered, she is faced with a devastating question: What if everything she thought was normal and good and true...wasn’t?
Clara Lawson is torn from her life in an instant. Without warning, her home is invaded by armed men, and she finds herself separated from her beloved husband and daughters. The last thing her husband yells to her is to say nothing.
In chapters that alternate between past and present, the novel slowly unpeels the layers of Clara’s fractured life. We see her growing up, raised with her sisters by the stern Mama and Papa G, becoming a poised and educated young woman, falling desperately in love with the forbidden son of her adoptive parents. We see her now, sequestered in an institution, questioned by men and women who call her a different name—Diana—and who accuse her husband of unspeakable crimes. As recollections of her past collide with new revelations, Clara must question everything she thought she knew, to come to terms with the truth of her history and to summon the strength to navigate her future.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Rena Olsen’s debut is dark, shocking, and impossible to put down. It’s the story of a young woman with several different names who’s detained after a raid on her husband’s log-cabin compound. Shifting quickly between present and past, we slowly piece together the truth that the police are desperately trying to get out of her. The Girl Before got under our skin. Even though we know Olsen’s heroine is made up, we got totally invested in the idea of her broken spirit being mended and healed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The FBI agents raiding Clara Lawson's rural homestead in the shadow of the Rockies shatter not only the door but almost every aspect of life as the 23-year-old knows it in therapist Olsen's suspenseful but disturbing debut about a human trafficking operation. Initially, the only reality Clara can remember is with forbidding Papa G, stern Mama Mae, and their son, Glen. She's one of an endless stream of girls to be trained for supposedly bright futures with wealthy "clients." But as her confinement in a psychiatric facility continues, with FBI interrogation, individual therapy sessions, and, eventually, participation in a support group, Clara starts to face some of the darker aspects of her past and the gut-wrenching choices that will define her future. Olsen does her best to make Clara sympathetic, but Clara's rosy na vet about the horrific reality of her situation can be difficult to take. Readers will struggle to relate to a character who may be at once a victim and a victimizer.
