Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are a dynamic duo of sorts. I mean, I hear they write together in real time! Having read The Wife Between Us last summer, I could not wait to get my hands on their next collaboration. Expectations were high given that I devoured Wife at the time (see my review here). So how did it fare?
Well, here is the thing about expectations—they are a double edged sword. On one hand, you write an awesome book, you get a new fan! Hundreds, thousands of new fans. Hurray for you! But then all those fans expect to be wowed each and every time you put pen to paper. And it’s difficult to wow each and every time. It’s legitimately difficult.
This was the problem here—my expectations were way too high after The Wife Between Us. All the twists and surprises there were truly unexpected, the pace exciting. An Anonymous Girl , on the other hand, was perfectly satisfactory. Good, even! But it was no Wife. Herein was its problem. None of the twists were unexpected and the novel fell a little flat for me. The characters didn’t ring true and the dialogue didn’t flow as naturally as I expected from these brilliant authors. Some of this may have had a little bit to do with the fact that I listened to the book on Audible; narration, after all, makes a big difference. Perhaps the voices given to the main characters did my perception of the novel a disservice. If you read this one, please let me know what you think. I give it 3.5-4 stars.