Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - An Anonymous Girl

Oh how I wish I could give this 5 stars, but the ending sadly did not do it for me. It felt a little too neat considering how smart Dr. Shields was. Anyways, I have been reading quite a few thrillers lately, but this one was definitely the best so far! The characters were intriguing, the mystery unfolded at a great pace, and the writing was good. Would definitely recommend to any thriller fan!

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abitofapoet's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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sarahadams's review against another edition

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tense

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

It took me a little while to get through this, but I'm not sure why. I liked the two POVs and that the chapters were short. Each POV was distinctive; it was clear whose perspective you were reading from even without an obvious indicator. Generally, I thought the pacing was good. I think the short chapters helped with this; jumping back and forth between the two perspectives was nice because I never got bored from staying in one person's perspective for too long. I do think the ending felt a bit slow, but I think that's just because we find out about 75% in what the twist is and are just sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

From the beginning, I was pulled out of this a bit. Having gone through university Institutional Review Boards myself, there's no way I'd ever be approved to pay participants $500 for what this study entailed; my IRB would tell me that's too high of an amount to pay people and it would essentially be coercive. I don't think most people reading this novel will be concerned with this; I think it's just my past experience that made me question the basic details. I get that the amount needed to be high enough to be enticing to Jess, but that detail was a bit of a hang-up for me. I know that university IRBs differ in their requirements and approvals, so maybe this would fly at other universities and I'm being nitpicky.

I get that Jess was pretty taken by Dr. Shields' mystique, and she did seem to question certain things, but I would have liked to have seen her question things a bit more, rather than accepting Dr. Shields' answers so readily for things that seemed pretty shady or odd. For example, I would definitely be asking questions if I was paid hundreds of dollars to pick up and deliver a statue, but I don't think Jess even questioned that one.

A few comments about the twist and ending:

We find out about 75% of the way through that Dr. Shields knew about Thomas' affair with April the whole time, as well as the affair with Lauren being fake. I'd have to go back and read the chapters where Dr. Shields refers to the fake affair, but it seemed that Dr. Shields believed that affair to be real. I'm choosing to give the authors the benefit of the doubt that these portions were written very carefully so that Dr. Shields wasn't directly lying to the reader, as that just doesn't make sense to me. I didn't get a sense as I was reading her chapters that something else was going on. I would have liked if there had been breadcrumbs in those sections to let the reader know that they should suspect that something was up with that story of the affair. I get that the affair with April was a twist, but it felt cheap to me since I didn't see any clues prior to Jess finding the photo, other than just a feeling I had that there was something more to what happened with April than what we were getting. I may have just not caught it from her chapters, or maybe I subconsciously did and that's why I had that feeling.

My biggest issue with the book was the ending, specifically Dr. Shields' breakdown with Jess and Thomas, not her suicide. Dr. Shields' breakdown occurred over the course of just a few lines in a single page. I felt like she went from pretty cool-headed to a massive breakdown at the mere hint of Thomas figuring out what she did. And then she just CONFESSED to him. What? I get that he's like her kryptonite, but it felt out of character for her. She had been able to manipulate him so many times before, even essentially poisoning him with hazelnuts. And the recording watch never even came into play. I thought that would play a role somehow. I felt like there was such a clear picture of who Dr. Shields was throughout the book, and then that breakdown came out of nowhere.

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motherelectricity's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

3.5

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