I guess you’re probably wondering about the next girl. Because there’s always another girl, right? A girl waiting to be taken. To be swept away. I’ll tell you about her.

It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun lost her sister, and she’s been searching ever since: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. Happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.

Until one day, local teenager Ellie Black is found in Washington State woods. Two years after her disappearance, she’s an echo of herself, but alive.

But something’s not right about this girl. Where has she been, and who is she protecting?

Chelsey has to find out. For herself, for her sister, and before the next girl is taken.

Two years after the disappearance of Elizabeth (Ellie) Black, she is found wandering through the woods. The seventeen-year-old is a shell of her former self. There are signs the young woman has been repeatedly assaulted and kept hostage for some time and she can’t bear to be touched or have the lights on.

Detective Chelsey Calhoun has been on the case since Ellie disappeared and it is up to her to find out the truth from Ellie about what happened and who took her. Detective Colhoun knows only too well about what it feels like for a family member to go missing as it happened to her sister too.

The Next Girl is a dark and gritty novel that relives many of the issues that Ellie faced during her ordeal in detail and isn’t for the faint-hearted. The book is certainly a shocker as the reader shares Ellie’s experiences and Detective Calhoun’s investigation as well as some details from the past.

The writing is a little unusual in some chapters and it felt quite stuttery and disjointed at times but the more I read the more I realised this style helped the book to feel more edgy and to help you feel the way Ellie felt inside.

Overall, the book is quite a slow read at first but does get quick the further you read. It is a tale of male dominance, of lies, and of cover-ups, and a story that mourns the loss of women at the hands of men and of their determination to survive.

Emiko Jean is a New York Times best-selling author of adult and young adult fiction. Her books have been published in over thirty languages. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America as a GMA book club pick, by Reese Witherspoon as a young adult book club pick, and in publications such as: Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Cosmopolitan, Shondaland and Bustle.

She lives in Washington with her husband and two kids.