A review by clair_82
My Girl by Jack Jordan

4.0

Wow what a start to the book! As the synopsis preempts, we are plunged into the depressive state that Paige is in following the recent suicide of her husband Ryan, and the murder of her 14 year old daughter, Chloe, 10 years prior.

It is a dark and depressive opening to the story, Paige is haunted by their deaths, particularly Ryan’s as she still have vivid flashbacks to finding him in the bath having slit his wrists. She is also tormented by Chloe’s death because her body was never discovered, just her dismembered arm in a river.

She is addicted to Codeine, which she convinces herself is about pain relief and not drug addition, and also is alcohol dependent to numb the emotional pain. Paige is pushing everyone away including her well meaning mother-in-law, Greta, and driving her father to an early grave through the stress of worrying about her. Paige is definitely on self-destruct mode, until she finds a gun and a mobile phone she does not recognise amongst Ryan’s belongings.

My Girl is a relatively short story (approx 240 pages) and is split into 2 distinct halves. Whilst I enjoyed this book, I was disappointed by it’s short length. The premise of the book was fantastic so I personally would have liked it to have gone into a more depth both with the present story and the main characters to understand why they are as they are – it certainly could have been much longer but would have kept my interest. My Girl actually left me with more questions than answers however I did read it in a couple of hours so that shows just how gripping it was!

My Girl is well written and I would certainly recommend it to those who enjoy psychological thrillers however I would have liked to have read a more chunkier novel with more character depth. This is a great foundation for Jordan’s writing career, I look forward to ready both his first novel, Anything for Her, as well as his future books.

I kindly received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.