Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - The Girls I've Been

I liked this, nothing too special but a good read. The dual / multiple timelines confused me quite a bit, and some could have been left out. Overall the book had some great discussions and themes, and it was intriguing till the end. I actually really liked the ending -

it was open and everything was NOT solved and had a perfect ending.

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elliehaahr's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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jorgilusty's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Things I liked:

I have mixed feelings about this book. There’s things I loved and things the author did that just really got under my skin. Maybe because it was a YA it just wasn’t giving what I needed.

-fast paced, tense, needed to find out what happened
-interesting premise/love a good con
-I

Things that I didn’t like:
-I feel like Nora is supposed to be a morally grey character but I think it was overdone and she never actually worked on her flaws much minus one therapy session we got a peek into
-give us more about Lee!! She was my fav but we just got vague hints about her past and that bothered me
- the author using trauma as basically three characters whole personalities. like, I get it but it just seems far fetched to me
- moral platitudes and virtue signaling from the author that gets gets old fast. I feel like she just took a bunch of sensitive topics and threw them together and it just left a lot unsaid. like, if you’re going to write about these things you should take the time to flesh them out properly and not just throw every single sensitive topic ever in for the sake of being “woke” or whatever.
-open ending that left a lot to question. At least there was assured mutual destruction that makes it more palatable but still, would have been nice to have it wrapped up
- a love triangle with 0 hard feelings or jealousy? I don’t know, it’s a little too trope-y and convenient for me

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holy_coconut's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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r0bin_05's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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auudrey's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Girls I’ve Been combined many typical elements of YA fiction in such an interesting and engaging way that I haven’t seen before. I wish I could give five stars but apparently, I’m very critical at the moment with giving books five-star ratings and always find something why I won’t give them this rating.

Without spoilers, I can’t say a lot about the plot but this much: In the past, Nora has lived with her abusive and criminal mother from whom she was able to flee when she was a teenager. Now, in the present, she just wants to pay in some money with her friends when a bank robbery happens, confronting her with her past and giving her chance to put it behind her.

What this novel did especially well was the combination of coming-of-age elements with the mystery/crime aspect of the story. The coming-of-age story is quite dark and serious which I didn’t expect but which was still greatly done. When looking at the mystery front, it was so clever how the characters slowly gathered pieces of information and things that could help them. The plans they had were just so creative and fun. The ending was great as well but what I didn’t like about it was the fact that

the robbery wasn’t connected to Nora’s past at all. I think it would’ve been even more interesting if this had been the case

Throughout the whole novel, there was a great feeling of tension. This tension was mainly created through the short chapters and the mixing of the past and present storyline which was executed so well. In general, I enjoyed the writing style, and there were so many sentences I just had to (virtually) underline since they were so great.

Looking at the characters, I generally liked them and found them interesting, even though there was a bit too much telling around them at the beginning. I especially loved to see the relationship between Nora and Iris which was just so cute. Talking about Nora, it’s so empowering to see how tough she has become after the abuse she had to endure. It was also so amazing to see how she

was able to free herself from her mom in the end

All in all, The Girls I’ve Been was a great read with great characters and storytelling. I would love to read more from this universe or from the characters.

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gabbyjc's review

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adventurous challenging mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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