Book Review: The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale

This book was originally sent to me by the publisher, Simon and Schuster Canada, for review early last year. I set it on my shelf and promptly forgot about it, as there is no shortage of domestic thrillers to choose from right now. But a few months ago, I was chatting with another woman who had brought The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale with her on a beach vacation, so I popped it in my carry-on bag and hopped on a plane to Brazil a few weeks ago. It didn’t ‘wow’ me as I had hoped, but it got the job done and held my attention for the majority of its 360ish pages.

Plot Summary

Billie is in her twenties, single, and just lost her job as a paralegal. She’s also just woken up in a stranger’s bed with a massive hangover, and no recollection of the night before. The last case she assisted with was charging a wealthy, handsome young doctor, Dr. Grange, of sexual assault of one of his ex-girlfriends. The witness that Billie found (another one of his ex-girlfriends) was willing to testify against him, but denied this on the stand and accused Billie of asking her to lie instead. Billie has a history of lying, but not in this case. In the past she has helped put other men behind bars, guys who have money and good looks behind them, somehow slithering their way out of punishment, and she’s decided she won’t let Dr. Grange off the hook, so now jobless, she approaches him as another potential target, putting herself in his sights in hopes she can gather evidence against him. Billie has a few other impressive skills, mainly tracking people online and covering her own digital footprint, so she’s able to hack into Dr. Grange’s online files to find damning videos he’s taken and shared with other men. In addition to the the help of her friend Heather who still works at that same law firm, Billie gets closer to finally revealing Dr. Grange for the monster he truly is – but her behind-the-scenes work puts her in danger as Dr. Grange’s body turns up on the floor of his swanky apartment the night after she visits him at home.

My Thoughts

It’s a great premise for a thriller, and Billie is a protagonist you want to root for. Pieces of her history are revealed, including the fact that her mother was bullied online, and killed herself due to this harassment. It’s this anger towards people and their careless actions against others that spurs on Billie’s desire to ‘make things right’ for victims. She doesn’t have much to her name other than a small cat named Buttons that she rescued from another abusive man, but because of her incredible (albeit, somewhat unbelievable) skills of digital tracking, she is never portrayed as a victim. Instead, she’s driven by the past wrongs done to her, and like a superhero, she’s willing to put herself in harms way to help others.

Despite Billie’s unique background and motivations, I found this book way too long. It didn’t need to be more than 200 pages as it felt bloated with extraneous information about her online movements, and unnecessary red herrings that served to confuse rather than grow the suspense. Much of it was also unbelievable; the coincidences, the returning plot threads from earlier, Billie’s skills, it was all too much when appearing in the same novel. As I said above, it gets the job done as a beach read to pass the time, but it could have been improved in many different ways, and this genre is too crowded to waste one’s time on a book with so many faults.