Blog Tour & Review: The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe

High school is over, but Nora O’Malley’s life isn’t, which is weird now that her murderous stepdad Raymond is free.

Determined to enjoy summer before her (possibly) imminent demise, Nora plans a ten day backpacking trip with Iris and Wes. Her plans hit a snag when Wes’s girlfriend tags along. Amanda is nice, so it’s not a huge issue—until she gets taken. Or rather, mistaken…for Nora. All because of a borrowed flannel.

Now Raymond has a hostage. Nora has no leverage. Iris has a spear and Wes is building boobytraps. It’ll take all of their skills to make it out of the forest alive.

There are three problems: Someone is lying. Someone is keeping secrets.

And someone has to die.

• Title: The Girl in Question
• Author:  Tess Sharpe
• Publisher: Little Brown Books
• Publication Date: May 14, 2024
• Genre: Thriller 
• Source: Print ARC via Publishers in exchange for an honest review
• Targeted Age Range: YA
• Content Warnings: violence and abuse, assault, death (detailed list of specific content warnings via Tess Sharpe’s Tumblr)
• Rating: ★★★★★

Firstly, a huge thank you to the publishers and TBR and Beyond Tours for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Additionally, please note that there will be a few minor spoilers for The Girls I’ve Been in this review so that I can discuss some plot points in The Girl in Question.

My first word after finishing The Girl in Question was “Wow”, with a capital W. I had high hopes for The Girl in Question because of how much I love The Girls I’ve Been, and I’m so glad to say that those hopes were met and exceeded! I would definitely suggest rereading The Girls I’ve Been before picking this one up if it’s been a while since you last read the first book. Originally, I wasn’t planning on it but I decided to since it had been 2.5 years since I last read it and I’m glad I decided to. For as many broad details of The Girls I’ve Been I remembered, there were little specifics that I forgot and I think had I not done a reread there were a few things that would’ve confused me.

The Girl in Question had a similar structure to The Girls I’ve Been in which we had the present day action and flashback scenes to fill in some of the gaps which once again worked very well. What I especially loved was that this time the flashbacks filled in some of the time between the events of the two books, and more of what life was like when Nora was living in Florida as Ashley and the lead up to her escaping Raymond. The pacing was great — it started off with a bang and then slowed down for a few chapters to give us a little stronger foundation before really hitting the ground running and not letting up until the end.

Tess Sharpe could release a million books in this universe and I would read all of them. I flew through this book; the stakes were so high, literally life or death, so it made it really hard to look away, and I didn’t want to. I’ve read a few other Tess Sharpe books and I truly think she does her best writing with this series/thrillers in general. I’d love for her to write more thrillers because I really could see them all being 5 stars from me if she continued to write like this. She knows how to get under your skin and keep you on the edge of your seat.

While I don’t need to love characters in order to love a book, I really love Nora, Iris and Wes and I think it does make the books more enjoyable for me. I love the complexity of each of them individually, as well as the complexity of their relationship. The bond that the three of them share (and the bond that Lee shares with Iris and Wes) is such a beautiful example of a found family. There were multiple scenes that made me tear up because I just love these characters so much — I felt very connected to them and wanted to give them all lots of hugs throughout this book. For The Girls I’ve Been it made sense for the entire story (with the exception of the phone call transcripts) to be from Nora’s POV only, but I’m so glad that in The Girl in Question we get chapters from Nora, Iris and Wes’ POV. It definitely made me feel even more connected to Iris and Wes, and there were certain plot points that I think were made stronger by having chapters that were Wes or Iris focused. 

In addition to our favorite characters of Nora, Iris, Wes and Lee, we’re introduced to a few other characters that I found very interesting. We hear about Amanda — Wes’ crush/soon to be girlfriend — in The Girls I’ve Been but we finally get to meet her in The Girl in Question and she was definitely a fascinating character; I really liked learning more about her, but the absolute star of the show is Turbo, Wes’ rescue dog. Turbo was the sweetest girl on the planet and I loved her SO MUCH. The flashback chapter that tells how Wes adopted Turbo had me crying and was absolutely one of my favorite parts of the book. Also, don’t worry, nothing bad happens to Turbo.

I highly recommend The Girl in Question to fans of As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson (well, the whole A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series but especially for the third book) and Megan Lally’s That’s Not My Name. If you’re looking for a high-stakes, no holds barred YA thriller, you need to read this one.

Links for The Girl in Question: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound