MYSTERY

Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry
Holt. Feb. 2018. 304p. ISBN 9780805098747. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780805098754. F
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The Connollys are an ordinary Dublin family, content, despite private challenges and heartbreaks. Then, one of David Connolly's freshman history students appears in his office at the university and announces that he is her father. The girl, Zoe, is the daughter of David's college sweetheart. Zoe is charming, magnetic, and lovely—but, it becomes increasingly apparent that she is also deeply troubled. Is she simply a lost teenage girl desperate for a relationship with a parent, or something more insidious? In alternating chapters, David and his wife Caroline narrate their evolving relationships with Zoe, as she enters their home and becomes entangled in every aspect of their lives, affecting their marriage, their careers, and their children, Robbie, 15, and Holly, 11.
VERDICT Two competing unreliable narrators create an unsettling, intense atmosphere in this domestic thriller. Though the foreshadowing can feel heavy-handed at times, Perry (The Innocent Sleep) delivers a twist ending that will make readers want to start again from the beginning. [See Prepub Alert, 8/13/17.]
Reviewed by Lindsay Morton, P.L. of Science, San Francisco , Jan 01, 2018
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