Twelve years ago, 18-year-old University of Iowa freshman Abby Hartmann disappeared. Now, Jon Allan Blue, the serial killer suspected of her murder, is about to be executed. Abby's best friends, Bree and Chelsea, watch as Abby's memory is unearthed and overshadowed by Blue and his flashier crimes. The friends, estranged in the wake of Abby's disappearance, and suffering from years of unvoiced resentments, must reunite when a high-profile podcast dedicates its next season to Blue's murders.
Tense and introspective, for readers of Megan Goldin and Heather Gudenkauf, Don’t Forget the Girl is an astonishing debut thriller that mines the complexities of friendship and the secrets between us that we may take to the grave.
Comment: I was seduced by the cover of this book and immediately imagined the tone and vibe of it. I also liked the idea of a thriller that would focus on the victims and not the killer.
Several years ago a serial killer was found guilty of murdering several young women but nothing could prove he also killed Abby Hartman, who simply disappeared one day and her body had not been found. Now, the killer is about to be executed and Abby's friends Bree and Chelsea revive that 2003 year, when everything changed, following the media interest on the case. Abby is only a possible victim but a podcaster chooses her as a possible focus for her new show, especially if the friends agree to share their side of things. But are they ready to share all of their memories... and guilt?
I really liked the idea of this novel. I thought the story would be moody and tense and that the real goal would be to understand, through Chelsea and Bree, if Abby had been a victim or not, of that killer. I was eager to see how the author would develop the plot without giving too much attention to the killer.
In a way, the pace and choice of how things play out are good elements and having the three girls' POVs in the past - Abyy's is in second person, which was sometimes too jarring - allows the reader to get a very good grasp on their behavior, personality, decisions, state of mind and so on. Everything shared helps us to making up an idea of what happened and why it was possible for Abby to be a potential victim. However, it soon became obvious this would not be a traditional thriller.
The story seemed to me to be more a character study and not a real investigation or step-by-step description of what happened. This is fine, I don't mind it exactly, but then the author also included some weird interlude passages between some of the girls's chapters, which were alternated between Bree, Chelsea and Abby in this order, and Abby's were also all in the past, of course. I just don't see the need for those interlude sections, which included post messages in forums and similar stuff, but short things, so.. why? It made for a welcome interruption, I've personally concluded.
Apart from the real lack of thriller vibes, at least until the end when we finally have some more definitive information, the whole story, including the current podcast idea based on Abby and her friends and how they might be linked to the killer, is pretty much all focused on the girls' thoughts and actions and why they are the way they are. Honestly, after two, three chapters on their attitudes I was already annoyed. I'm afraid I could not connect with none of them and found both Chelsea and Bree's adult choices and behavior to be disagreeably, morally at least.
I liked it that at the very end, once we know what happened to Abby, Bree and Chelsea are able to finally mourn their youth years, kind of, and this is like a catharsis and I liked the closure feel the last two chapters gave me. I liked who they seemed to be evolving into but who they were as 20 years olds did not seem engaging at all. It was a slight struggle in some moments to read about their feelings and choices. In regards to their connection with the killer, when it becomes obvious how they knew him I was, like "oh", but perhaps this was because I wasn't really paying attention.
I think this option to focus on the victim, or the possible victim, was a bold choice but I can't say the result was that rewarding. I might be biased since I didn't like the main narrators that much, but Abby in particular was not such a great person, and the biggest secret she had along with why she might have been a victim seemed a little too unimportant, although, of course, it would always depend on how the narrative is presented. I don't think this was a successful element.
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