The Girl Before by JP Delaney

Picked up off the deep discount shelf at Barnes and Noble- could have left it there and been no worse off.  But, I was heading to the beach, I needed a book to read on the plane and the kids were getting antsy...so I bought it.  A mixture between a pyschological thriller and a mystery, it was not a bad "beach read" if you have low expectations for such.  I left it on the bookcase at the beach house for some other desperate beach goer to read...there was no way I was dragging it back to Minnesota.

I should not be so hard on it, I did finish it and it did keep me guessing for most of the book.  But there were a couple of overriding issues for me.  I could not really relate to the characters...the premise of the book was that these young women were invited to live in a dream house but the invitation came with strict rules regarding how one was supposed to live in such house-I just could not relate to being willing to live in a place where there could never be any dirty dishes, never be any clothes lying around, no allowance for personal pictures or knick-knacks or really anything personal- the whole minimalist thing makes me scratch my head.  I'm not a hoarder but I like my "stuff" around me.  Plus that whole someone else telling me what to do and how to live my life?...not so much.

Rating:  Good enough #5