Little Girl Gone - Book Review

There are some books that I wish that I'd written and some books that stay with me for a long time - but, very rarely, there comes along a book that I'm just so glad that I was a part of reading; a book that I want to finish now, and that I never want to end in equal measure. Little Girl Gone by Alexandra Burt definitely fell into that last, rarely seen for me category. Anything that promises to be a mix between the infamous Gone Girl (which I disliked so much I stopped reading) and The Girl On The Train (which I loved but guessed the twist to) is a book that I'm going to make sure that I read, out of intrigue if nothing else.

This book is intriguing from the very beginning - it doesn't follow the normal thriller sequence of beginning in peace and then being thrown into chaos; this starts itself in the midst of chaos and doesn't settle until a few chapters from the very end. This does mimic Gone Girl and The Girl On The Train in a number of ways, and I can see why the three would be grouped together; with the confusion over whom to trust, the disorientation within the plot for the main character as well as yourselves - it definitely fits the idea of the modern thriller, but in my opinion it grabs it and runs with it in a way that no other has yet.

The story follows Estelle, a mother that has been involved in an accident before the book starts and is suffering from amnesia - as Estelle realises her daughter is missing, and has been for a number of days before the accident that left her with amnesia, we are thrown into a story where it seems that we cannot trust anyone. All we really know as readers is that Estelle is injured, her daughter is missing and she didn't report it to the police. As we navigate her difficult relationship with her husband and find out her child was missing from behind locked doors; we start to see a story wherein everything isn't quite what it originally seemed.

There's something intriguing and frustrating about the way that the book is written. When Estelle comes up against a block in her memory; we do too, doubting her in the same way that we witness her doubt herself. We are drip fed information as she recalls it, and the swinging between remembered information, news reports and the current happenings allows us to feel the same kind of disorientation that Estelle does and we are submerged into the story and given the same feelings that Estelle is in order to better connect to the characters. It works, though, it had me up until 1:30am on the day that I bought it finishing it off, it had me guessing the right twist and yet still not quite managing to piece together the story - it's clever, intriguing and furstrating in equal measures.

All in all, it's a book that will keep you gripped until you're finished - just as dark as Gone Girl and just as confusing and disorientating as The Girl On The Train but, in my humble opinion, strides ahead of either of them in the thriller genre.

Have you read Little Girl Gone?

Sammy xo.