Invisible Girl

    Valentine's night. Normally filled with love, was instead filled with darkness and secrets for a select group in England. Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell dives into the darkness and mystery that followed a 17 year old girl - Saffirye Maddox's - disappearance on the night of February 14th. Saffiyre's disappearance comes after a string of sexual attacks throughout the city which left everyone wondering if she was the next victim. These attacks had not had an identified attacker and the police's only lead they had was the not well known, creepy neighbor that lives across the street from where Saffiyre was last seen. What they did not know was that Saffiyre was the one who held all of the information they needed to find who the attacker was. She knew the many secrets people kept, including her own. The questions that were being asked were what does she know? Would the information she knew lead someone to abduct her? Was she abducted? Is she alive? A mystery full of questions and twists, Invisible Girl was a pretty good book that I rate a 3/5 stars. 

     The plot of Invisible Girl as pretty interesting as a while, but the delivery of it could have been better. At some points it felt as thought the plot and the characters were not developing at all as the book progressed. The very beginning of the book introduces the main conflict and characters. From this point they then move into a state of "before." This is where we get the background on Dr. Roan Fours and Saffiryes relationship, as well as the neighbor, Owen Pick. In the before we also learn about how there have been many attacks throughout the city and the strain of Roan and his wife's relationship. After the long introductory phase then there was the disappearance itself. This was an interesting part of the book, but much like the introductory part, it was very long and drawn out. It explains how Saffirye went missing and how it affected the people around her. After this the author really dove into how it affected the people around her. During this part she used a lot of imagery and descriptions. The setting was pretty detailed so you could get a feel for where all of the things that were happening were taking place. This was the part of the book where the conflict was getting partially resolved, as it was the "after." The general plot of Invisible Girl did have a pretty good structure, but it was not written effectively. 

     The writing and execution of Invisible Girl could have been a lot better. The first 2/3 of the book were pretty slow and - as I have mentioned - the plot was not developing very much. This made it hard to continue reading. I would have finished this book much quicker if it was written at a better pace. Even at the end the pacing was off, especially compared to the first bit of the book. The ending was very rushed. Everything started to happen all at once and I feel like it would have been better if it was spread out and slowed down a bit. These sudden pace changes made it difficult to read as well. One part of the writing that I did like was that it was written in multiple point of views. This partially helped with the flow of the book, but it also made it confusing at some points during the end. Saffiryes point of view was a lot farther behind then Owens was and it made it a little hard to follow as it switched between the two. At this point of the book everything was also moving really fast, so that did not help when trying to follow through the ending of the book. Overall, I did not like the way that Invisible Girl was written. 

      Invisible Girl was not my favorite, nor was it my least favorite book. I rated it a 3/5 stars because of its questionable pace and some other technical things. I would be a little weary to recommend this book just because I did not like it too much. The idea behind it was good, but it just did not deliver for me. As I mentioned before, the pacing was pretty off throughout the book. It was either too slow or too fast, there was never a good in between. The characters also did not evolve as much as I would have liked them to. There is a possible sequel coming out for this book, but it is probably not something I would read just because of how long this book took me to get through. All in all, this is definitely not a favorite book of mine, but it was not completely awful.