Review: The Girls Before - Kate Alice Marshall

Review: The Girls Before - Kate Alice Marshall - February 2026

I've been a fan of Kate Alice Marshall for a while now , she has a real knack for that unsettling, atmospheric tension that makes you want to keep reading with all the lights on so when The Girls Before popped up on the Libby app, I didn't hesitate. Into my queue it went, and I settled in with a cuppa and high hopes.

The premise is genuinely gripping. A girl called Stranger, trapped alone in a dark basement, rationing her last scraps of food and water, with only the desperate scrawlings of girls who came before her scratched into the walls for company. Meanwhile, Audrey, a search and rescue expert carrying the weight of her best friend Janie's long-ago disappearance  stumbles onto evidence in the forest that pulls her into decades of buried secrets tied to the town's most powerful family. There's even a local legend woven through it all: a forest witch who saves girls from bad men - this gave me Urban Legend crossed with Blair Witch Project vibes ( you can tell I am a 90s/2000s horror movie fan) , though as Audrey knows too well, for every girl saved, another is lost. On paper, it's everything I want from a thriller.

And yet, I found myself a little deflated as I read. The story felt haphazard in places, I struggled to get my footing with the timeline, and it wasn't until later that I realised what I'd taken to be the present was actually the past. That disjointed quality made it hard for me to fully sink in and trust the narrative, which is such a shame because the bones of the story are so compelling.

That said the ending genuinely caught me off guard. The shock at the final reveal was the kind that makes you sit back and blink at the page. I did not see it coming, and in that moment, Kate Alice Marshall absolutely delivered. It redeemed a lot of my earlier frustrations and reminded me why I keep coming back to her books.

So, a mixed bag from me on this one. Not my favourite of hers, but that ending? Worth the journey to get there.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4fc5UeI