The Girl She Was

by Alafair Burke

First published 2022

Hope Miller has lived without her past for fourteen years. She was pulled from a car wreck in New Jersey with complete amnesia and no identification. Doctors expected her memory to return, but it never did. Now she has disappeared from her new East Hampton home, leaving only a blood sample behind. The blood connects to a Kansas murderer's DNA. Manhattan defense lawyer Lindsay Kelly, who originally found Hope after the accident, contacts NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher for help. Hatcher's father spent his career tracking the Kansas killer before his own suspicious death twenty years ago. Ellie suspects Hope's vanishing links to her father's unsolved case. Three women begin separate investigations that will eventually merge. Lindsay searches for her missing friend while questioning what Hope might have been fleeing all those years ago. Ellie digs into her father's old files and his final case. Hope's forgotten identity becomes the key to mysteries spanning two decades. Their combined efforts will expose buried truths that transform everything they believed about the past.

Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller, detective

Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: amateur-sleuth, cold-case, missing-person, separate-investigations, unsolved-mystery

Setting: East Hampton, Kansas, Manhattan, New Jersey, New York

Period: 1990s, 2000s, 2010s

416 pages · Paperback · Harper Large Print

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