Pages: 353
Published: 26th January 2021
Genre: Young Adult Thriller
Content Warnings: Domestic/Psychological abuse, sexual assault, injury detail
Nora O’Malley’s been a lot of girls. As the daughter of a con-artist who targets criminal men, she grew up as her mother’s protégé. But when mother fell for the mark instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con: escape.
For five years Nora’s been playing at normal. But she needs to dust off the skills she ditched because she has three problems:
#1: Her ex walked in on her with her girlfriend. Even though they’re all friends, Wes didn’t know about her and Iris.
#2: The morning after Wes finds them kissing, they all have to meet to deposit the fundraiser money they raised at the bank. It’s a nightmare that goes from awkward to deadly, because:
#3: Right after they enter bank, two guys start robbing it.
The bank robbers may be trouble, but Nora’s something else entirely. They have no idea who they’re really holding hostage…
As concepts for young adult thrillers go, it does not get much better than this. The idea is unique, dark, and extremely beguiling. A main character who is unknowable and morally grey and just about capable of anything is thrust into a life-threatening situation, at the same time both a victim and the owner of a frightfully calculating mind. It is dramatic and tense from start to finish. Yet somehow, despite all that, I struggled to fully connect with this book.
It was not for the want of trying. There were times where the action was exhilarating or made you hold your breath, and there was no questioning the unpredictability of it all. Intrigue abounds over Nora’s identity as even when the layers unpeel, you never feel you truly know her. The issue was, the method of storytelling and the fact that most of the characters are not so well developed made it somewhat lacking. It was either thrilling or boring, with nothing between.
Told over two separate timelines, it bounces between the ultra high stakes of the bank robbery taking place in the present day, and the various stages of Nora’s life until she broke free of her con artist mother’s control. There are also audio transcripts of her sister Lee talking with the police and the bank robbers, which generally add very little of value to the story whatsoever.
Nearly all of the thrills come from being placed right at the centre of a bank robbery. The entire sequence of events takes a number of unexpected turns and it becomes almost a battle of wits between Nora and the robbers. You never know what is going to happen next, or who is going to do what, while it must be said that the author captures both the atmosphere and the sense of danger here perfectly.
The past timeline is helpful in that you really understand what Nora has been through and how she became such a survivor with a very fine line between grasping right and wrong. It is clear she is a damaged individual having been manipulated by her mother and forced to swap routinely between various different guises, and these things make her actions during the bank robbery seem rather more understandable.
Although these sections are hard-hitting, they were also quite dull to read. The way they were written did not hold my attention and I felt nothing tangible towards Nora. A lot of the characters who appear with her in the past timeline – including her mother – were cardboard cut-outs and the only object of interest was which name she happened to be going by. The frequent timeline jumps were also very jarring.
There are several moments where you do have to suspend your disbelief, and that made even the scenes at the bank lose some credibility in the end. For the three main characters to have all suffered at the hands of manipulative or abusive parents was perhaps stretching it a bit too, and there is also the fact that the robbers themselves are sometimes too foolish to be taken seriously.
The very idea of Nora makes her incredibly compelling. She is a great character in the sense that she is so enigmatic, you do not know what she might do or how far she may go. The fact you never know who she really is – even after her real name is finally revealed – is what makes her devilishly fascinating, and while there are elements of good and bad in her personality, she is mainly about surviving at all costs.
As we only really get to see them in an extreme scenario, we do not get to know Nora’s girlfriend Iris or her best friend Wes particularly well. At least with Iris she is likeable and we do find out about her surprising amount of resourcefulness and a very distinctive dress sense, but there is nothing much to latch on to about Wes at all, save for a tiny bit of background.
With bank robberies, Nora hurling herself out of cars and guns being brandished, you could truly be forgiven for thinking that the author has been playing too much Grand Theft Auto. Indeed, the whole thing is pretty intense to read, and the writing is short and sharp just to mirror the fact Nora is having to think on her feet, constantly assessing the situation at hand.
All of that action occasionally belies the powerful themes the book contains, so that is why I feel the past timeline was a missed opportunity. There was too much focus on how Nora escaped and not on the cons that she pulled off alongside her mother, which would have been a lot more interesting. As it is, it just felt like something of a drag until the story returned to the present.
Overall, this book represents a curious mix. For some of the time it keeps you teetering on the edge of your seat as Nora engages in a daredevil scheme to overcome the robbers under the highest of stakes, while the rest of it is underwhelming fare. I might be in the minority here, but for me the execution of the past timeline ruined what could have been an amazing book. Then again, full marks for the concept.
Despite my conflicted feelings about it, The Girls I’ve Been is Tess Sharpe’s most acclaimed novel to date and was regarded as one of the standout young adult thrillers of 2021, nominated for several awards.
Living in rural California, Sharpe has written a mixture of things, including a Jurassic World prequel, and another popular YA novel called Far From You. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies.
A thrilling premise which translates into an excellent setup for the present timeline, and both the bisexual and endometriosis representation is appreciated. However, I just could not connect with the past timeline and that weighed it down for me.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Stephen Reads Books 