Book review: The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall

4⭐
Genre ~ crime thriller
Setting ~ oops, I forgot
Publication date ~ February 24, 2026
Publisher ~ Macmillan Audio
Est Page Count ~ 307 (p+ 51 chapters +e)
Audio length ~ 10 hours 8 minutes
Narrators ~ Ina Barron & Karrisa Vacker
POV ~ dual 1st, present tense
Featuring ~ 3 parts, search and rescue, missing girls

My review:

A very intriguing prologue starts us off with a girl chained up below.

Audrey, along with her faithful dog companion, Barry, are part of a search and rescue team. Barry steals the show and thankfully remains unharmed throughout.

We open up with a search for a young boy on private property. Property about to be owned by a prominent family. A politician, a former pro athlete and former child actor act like they want to help while they also do their best to ensure dark secrets remain hidden.

Audrey knows there’s something going on in the woods, and will stop at nothing to uncover the truth and hopefully get some answers on her missing teenage “friend” Janie. She certainly doesn’t always make the best choices, but she can’t help but keep digging and digging and digging.

It’s told in below/above & before/after & here/now chapters, which was easy to follow along with.

Overall, a bit of a slow burn, but I was fully engaged. Had some nice twists, too.

Narration notes:
Thrilled there were two. They both did fabulous.

Purchase link: https://amzn.to/4akeoh4

Add to your never ending TBR  ~ goodreads

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.

Book blurb:

There is a girl in a basement.
The door has stopped opening.
The light is gone.

Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But if the door opens at last, will it mean salvation, or only the beginning of her fight to survive?

Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.

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