Karin Slaughter | Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver #2)

The Book: 

Girl, Forgotten by Karin Slaughter (Andrea Oliver, #2)
Published August 23rd 2022 by William Morrow & Company
Date read: July 3, 2022

The Characters: 

Andrea Oliver
Emily Vaughn

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon


The Plot (from Goodreads):

A small town hides a big secret…

Who killed Emily Vaughn?

Prom Night. Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn dresses carefully for what’s supposed to be the highlight of any high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the night, because of that secret, she will be dead.

Nearly forty years later, Andrea Oliver, newly qualified as a US Marshal, receives her first assignment: to go to Longbill Beach to protect a judge receiving death threats. But Andrea’s real focus isn’t the judge – it’s Emily Vaughn. Ever since she first heard Emily’s name a year ago, she’s been haunted by her brutal death. Nobody was ever convicted – her friends closed ranks, her family shut themselves off in their grief, the town moved on – so the killer is still out there. But now Andrea has a chance to find out what really happened…

Click here for book spoilers for Girl, Forgotten
Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read Girl, Forgotten, I suggest you turn back now.

The Twist:

Clayton Morrow was Nick Harp, Andrea’s father and the villian of Book 1. Andrea was tasked with proving he killed Emily Vaughn, in order to keep him in prison longer.

In present day, Dean and Nardo were running a fava bean farm that was really a cult preying on young girls. They were starving and sexually assaulting them. Ricky had married and divorced Nardo. She knew about the farm but was too afraid of them to do anything about it. 

The judge was sending death threats to herself in order to get Marshall protection from Dean wexler. Dean was too smart to do anything that would provide evidence, but Esther knew he was a threat to her and Judith. Dean had told her that he was Judith’s father and was blackmailing her and Franklin. Franklin gave him the farm as part of the blackmail deal.

Franklin had decided conversations between himself, Dean, and Nardo that incriminated them for fraud. Esther gave the evidence to Andrea to help her take down the farm.

The Marshalls made a plan to bring Dean and Nardo in, but Andrea saw Nardo taking Star to the diner. While Andrea waited for backup, chief Stilton came in drunk. He got Nardo to admit he raped Emily and then shot him.

Andrea took Ricky home. While there, she found Emily’s Columbo Investigation notes. She connected the dots and got Ricky to admit that she had killed Emily because she was angry that Emily was carrying Nardo’s baby. She had rented a black tux the night of prom to blend in.

The Ending:

Clay called Andrea at the very end to ask her to visit him, saying he had information about Jasper that she’d be interested in.

If you can’t remember the ending to Pieces of Her, click here for a reminder of what happened.

If you haven’t read Pieces of Her, I recommend reading it before Girl, Forgotten. You could also watch the show–it’s pretty true to the story, minus a few gory details.

If you've only watched the show, though, click here for some key differences to keep in mind.

Laura is still enrolled in Witness Protection in the books, and Mike is still her agent.

Unlike in the show, Jasper and Andrea never meet in Pieces of Her. She meets him very briefly for the first time at the beginning of Book 2.

In the book, Nick was arrested and imprisoned, not on the run. He is coming up for parole, and Andrea, Laura, and Jasper all want him to stay inside for life.

Other than that, the show cuts out a lot of the gorier details about Laura being raped by various men.

The Review: 

Nothing is more exciting to me than a new Karin Slaughter book! Thank you to William Morrow/Harper Collins for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, I didn’t really like Andrea in Pieces of Her. She was annoyingly helpless, and I didn’t find her POV as interesting as Jane’s. I was surprised to see that Karin was continuing her story, but she really grew on me in this book. Fresh out of the Marshall Academy, Andrea is rushed into her first case on special request of her uncle Jasper, with hopes of uncovering information to keep her father in prison for life. She’s no longer helpless–she is now a clever investigator, and much easier to root for!

I would recommend reading Pieces of Her first, because there’s a lot of important backstory about Andrea and her family that you’ll miss if you skip to this one. Girl, Forgotten will also give away the ending of Pieces of Her. If for some reason you don’t want to read it, though, Emily Vaughn’s story can carry itself!

Similar to my opinion of the first book in the series, I enjoyed the plot line set in the past more than the present. Emily’s case kept me hooked, and I really enjoyed figuring it out alongside Andrea and Bible.

I got a kick out of how Karin brought her love of memes to this book in the form of Mike’s silly texts to Andrea. I’m interested to see where the slow progression of Mike and Andrea’s love story goes, too.

The very end of Girl, Forgotten leaves the reader with the impression that another book in the series will be coming soon, and I’m excited to read it!

Audio Review: Kathleen Early’s voice immediately brings me back to reading the beloved Will Trent series, and feels like coming home. I adore her narrations, and I always associate her with Karin’s books, even when I’m listening to something else she’s read! As always, this audiobook production was perfect.

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