Title: The Next Girl
Author: Pip Drysdale
Published: November 30th 2022
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
Pages: 368
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Thriller, Suspense
RRP: $32.99
Rating: 4 stars
Promising Young Woman meets High Fidelity in the dark and twisty new thriller from the bestselling author of The Sunday Girl, The Strangers We Know and The Paris Affair.
A bad day at work. A drunken night. A rogue Instagram follow. That’s all it takes to ruin a life …
The question is, whose life will be ruined? When Billie wakes up in a strange guy’s bed, her first thought is: what happened last night? She can’t even remember meeting him. And how the hell did she get to Coney Island?
Then reality bites and the memories flood in – the reason she was in that bar, drinking to start with: today she’s going to get fired. Because yesterday her law firm lost a big case: Samuel Grange v Jane Delaney. And it looked like it was her fault.
It wasn’t. Yet now Samuel Grange is free to drive off into the sunset in his stupid Porsche and do it all again to another woman. And all Billie can think is: What about the next girl? And the one after that? But there is nothing she can do to stop him.
Unless … She could expose the truth about him on her own. Then everyone would see what he was really like. And he wouldn’t be able to do it again.
The problem is, the only way to protect the next girl is to become the next girl. And, well, that could be a little risky … even deadly.
Review:
‘Because the only way for me to protect the next girl is if I am the next girl.’
Musician, actress and author Pip Drysdale burst on the domestic noir scene with her smash hit debut, The Sunday Girl. Now her third novel is being developed for television. In the meantime, before we see our first Pip Drysdale novel on the big screen, we have The Next Girl. A story with incredible drive and plenty of dark mystery elements, I enjoyed being taken on a high powered spin with Pip Drysdale.
The Next Girl follows Billie, a messed-up woman, or so it seems when we first meet her. Billie has woken up on possibly the worst twenty-four hours of her life. She finds herself in bed with a man she doesn’t recognise and she doesn’t know how she got to Coney Island. As Billie slowly receives little fragments of information about her broken life, she realises that she was fired in the wake of a huge court case loss. Now the man charged has escaped any kind of retribution, so now Billie fears that he will strike again. Billie takes matters into her own hands and will stop at nothing to take down the man in question, Samuel Grange. But it is a dangerous undertaking, Billie will have to become the very girl she fears and his next victim. Will Billie survive this reckless pursuit of justice?
Pip Drysdale’s name has been on my priority list since I read her first novel The Sunday Girl. I have since continued my Pip Drysdale affair with her subsequent releases, The Strangers We Know and The Paris Affair. I was counting on Drysdale’s latest to be yet another compulsive read and I was right!
I’m always left a little breathless after reading a Pip Drysdale novel and this new one was no exception. The Next Girl definitely got my heart racing more than few times and I felt a little giddy by the end. The opening was a killer, it really pulled me in right into the action and I was keen to see how it would all pan out for Billie. I loved the original set up of this one and the rest of the story was filled with plenty of thrills. The plot zips along at such a fast rate that you hardly notice that you haven’t left your reading spot. I know I was dying to stay up to finish The Next Girl, but my eyes failed me and I had to give in to sleep. Drysdale’s fourth release is relentless as always, filled with psychological foolery and even some tech savvy parts that might have just gone over my head a few times. Billie is a suspect narrator and her background made her version of events quite untrustworthy. Billie was also a bit of a mess but driven at the same time! However, you still really want Billie to triumph as her reasons for continuing her pursuit of justice in such a dangerous manner is honourable. The Next Girl will undoubtedly keep you hooked until the end. I apologise for providing such a scant review, but I think less is more in this case!
The Next Girl is Pip Drysdale at her optimum. Risky, tension filled, addictive and daring. An inevitable hit this summer, pick up a copy today!
The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale was published on 30th November 2022 by Simon & Schuster Australia. Details on how to purchase the book can be found here.
To learn more about the author of The Next Girl, Pip Drysdale, visit here.
*I wish to thank Simon & Schuster Australia for providing me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.
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