Cristina Alger is talented and bright, I enjoy her books very much. She takes these concepts of murder and trouble character and she weaves them into a story that you need to devour.

I thought this was such a well-done mystery. Alger has created characters that you can relate to and emphathize with. This book will keep you from putting it down!

This story took off and kept me captivated until the end.  I really liked the main character, Nell.  Constant twists and turns keep you going until the very end.

I loved The Banker’s Wife and Alger’s writing in it, and Girls Like Us is just as amazing! This story held my interest and was impossible to put down. Highly highly recommend! Five stars

First, let me thank netgalley and the publishers for approving my request for an early release of this book.  All reviews of my netgalley books can be found on goodreads and youtube.  Please be sure to check out the links attached.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review. 
I highly recommend this book.
I thought it was an addictive, fast-paced, well written, twisty, dark and gritty mystery/thriller.
This is the first book that I have read by Christina Alger but, it won’t be my last.

This was SO. GOOD. It’s quick paced and kept me guessing. I’m very grateful to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars.

A well-paced procedural with a decent plot. 

Girls like us sets itself up nicely at the outset: A likable heroine, a compelling and puzzling string of seemingly connected murders, and a solid stable of suspects, including the protagonist’s own father. 

That last bit we’ve seen before (Caz Frear’s Sweet Little Lies did it so well that I almost feel the Is My Dad A Murderer? plotline should be retired in its honor), but Alger uses it well to keep our attention. 

The pacing and readability of the book never flags, and the plot and the solve do add up in the end, but the climax is more depressing than exciting and Alger tips her hand on who the murderer is far too early in the book if you pay close attention. 

The “Everyone is corrupt and monstrous!” thing felt like a bit of a dud too...It reminded me a bit of Don Winslow’s The Force, except this book wasn’t nearly as much fun and thus can’t get away with as much of this sort of exaggerated drama. 

Alger has dipped a toe into the mystery/thriller genre before with plot points in her other novels. This isn’t a bad effort for her first time leaping all the way in, but I think I preferred her wryly observant novel The Darlings, where the primary focus of the story was different and felt more well-suited to the Alger’s talents as a storyteller.

This was my first time reading one of Alger's novels, and I have to say, she did not disappoint! Cristina has a gift for setting up the plot extremely well. I also enjoyed her descriptions of the setting so much - she really took me to Long Island! This isn't your commercial, mass-market thriller. This one has depth, substance, and something else to it that I can't quite do it justice to try to describe - I'll call it the "it factor."

I enjoyed being transported into the world of FBI agent Nell and thought the premise was very intriguing, but really enjoyed the whole book. The ending was perfect!

I received a review copy of this book from Net Galley and Putnam Penguin last summer. Since I received it after the publication date, I moved it to the back burner in order to prioritize galleys whose publication dates could still be met. January came, and I still hadn’t opened the book. Deeply ashamed, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons and listened to it in the evenings while preparing dinner. The audio version is three stars, but I suspect that if I had stuck to the digital review copy, it might have been closer to four, so I am rounding my rating upward. 

FBI agent Nell Flynn, our protagonist, returns home after ten years away in order to bury her father and deal with his estate. She and her dad were estranged, and her mother died when she was a child; she has no siblings; she is also dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, the fallout from an earlier case. I assumed incorrectly that this earlier case must mean that Nell Flynn either had, or was about to have her own series, yet no mention is made of this; as far as I can tell the PTSD has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with any other aspect of the story. Her boss urges her to seek treatment; she doesn’t want to because she’s hard-boiled, and yada yada. Moving on. 

The body of a young woman is found, and then there’s another; since she happens to be visiting Suffolk County, her father’s partner asks Nell to lend a hand. She is recruited as a consultant, but she gets the sense that the local veterans don’t want her to dig deeply. Her father’s partner is a relative newbie, not part of the old boys’ network, and so she and he work together to try to solve the killings, but she is obstructed at every turn. Is there a cover-up taking place, and if so, is it because her father was culpable? First one thing and then another makes her wonder whether he might have killed them, and while she is at it, she also wonders if he had a hand in her own mother’s death many years ago, when she was quite small. 

The thing that makes this story unique is the fact that the cop is investigating her own dead father. I also like the way the author deals with the mystery woman that her father’s will includes. I thought I saw how that thread was going to play out, and I was not even close to being right. I like Alger’s subtlety here.  I also like the medical examiner, who is female too. 

The main challenge for me was as a listener. The reader that performed the audio version has a painfully wooden delivery and pronounces a couple of fairly common words differently from anyone else that I’ve heard, and each time she said them I was distracted away from the story line. The way Nell’s father’s old friend, Dorsey, is voiced sounds like a bad John Wayne imitation. 

So, should you read this book? If you enjoy crime fiction that’s character based, particularly with a female cop or detective, you could do worse. I wouldn’t pay full jacket price for it, though, and I don’t recommend the audio version.

Thank you netgalley and publisher for the early copy.

I had a hard time connecting with the writing style and decided to put it down.

Loved this book, the character was spot on. It was fast paced and character driven. I also liked her other book The Banker's Wife.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advance review copy. The story follows FBI agent Nell Flynn, who returns to her childhood home on Long Island after the sudden death of her father. While there, she becomes involved in the investigation of a the grisly murders of two young women. To her surprise, she soon discovers the primary suspect is her father. The circumstances of the murders were reminiscent of the real life Long Island serial killer, which I appreciated. I felt like the plot was well-paced, and I really enjoyed the ending. The reveal of a killer that surprises me is always a plus in my book! I will definitely be interested in reading more books in this series.

Girls Like Us takes us on an emotional mystery ride from almost the very beginning. We are introduced to Nell Flynn, FBI agent, who has returned to Long Island after a decade. She is on leave from the FBI after shooting someone in a case that she just finished. While she is on leave, Nell is given news that her father, a Long Island police officer, has died in a motorcycle accident. Nell has not seen her father in the ten years that she has been away from her hometown and has not had the best relationship with him. Nell’s mother, whom she was close with, died when she was young, and her dad has never been the easiest person to have a father/daughter bond with. Upon her arrival to her childhood home, she is approached by her father’s fairly recent partner, Lee, who asks her to consult on a murder case that seems to be similar to another murder that took place in the same area a year prior. As Nell helps with the investigation, she realizes that her father might be a suspect. 

This book had all the twists and turns for me to sit on the edge of my seat as I turned each page in anticipation of what will come next. I tried to guess who was involved and left me stumped until the very end! The author does a great job at a crime mystery book and would highly recommend reading this! 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3047685017

Nell Flynn couldn't wait to get out of Suffolk County.  She doesn't have good memories from her childhood there after her mother was murdered when Nell was seven.  Her father was a homicide detective and was briefly suspected but he and Nell were miles away, camping in the forest.  Afterwards, though, her father was cold and distant as her mother had supplied all the warmth and color a little girl loved. 

Now Nell has returned after the death of her father in a motorcycle accident.  Nell is now an FBI agent; she lives her life on the road, consulting with police departments across the country on serial killers.  The life suits her; she has no interest in forming relationships with anyone.  Her last case left her wounded so she is out on leave to heal and has time to settle the estate and decide whether or not to sell the house and sever the last ties with her childhood.

When a body is found, a detective who was a childhood friend comes calling.  Lee wants Nell's help and expertise.  When Nell finds that there was another body found a year earlier and that her father was working on the case, her interest is piqued.  Soon she finds the pattern.  Both victims are young Hispanic women, both were occasional escorts hiring out to party with the wealthy men who inhabit Suffolk County and its beaches in the summer.  Both were dismembered then tied up in burlap and buried.  Is there a serial killer at work?  And horrible as it sounds, was that killer Nell's father?  The clues could point his way and he was hiding a lot of secrets.  Can Nell discover the truth?

Alger has written an interesting novel about how our childhood influences our choices in life.  Nell is wounded by her early loss and her father's coldness and distance.  Her mother's murder pointed the way to Nell's career and her father's skills and early influence made her a skillful investigator.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Another great read from Cristina Alger! Nell is another great complex female character and the mystery kept me turning pages late into the night. Looking forward to reading whatever she writes next.

Loved this story! I want to see FBI agent Nell Flynn have a series. She is a great damaged character. I got vibes of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone. I enjoyed the dark, gritty feel of the setting conjured up from Ms. Alger's descriptive writing. This town in Suffolk County New York, where there's a real divide between the wealthy and the working class. The cops, the restaurant workers, housekeepers,  struggle to fit in, it's their town too, and the town cannot survive without them. This was another book that I did not put down and finished over the course of a weekend. I am looking forward to seeing The Banker's Wife on the screen and I think this character of Nell Flynn can have her own Netflix series. Bravo!

Girls Like Us was my second Cristina Alger book. It was intense with some crazy twists! When Nell returns home for her father’s funeral, she becomes involved in the investigation of two young women. As she continues to dig deeper, she starts to uncover more and more that makes her question her father. Now she doesn’t know who to trust because her father was a detective. Nell is FBI, but does that mean she can trust the other detectives or cops in Suffolk County? I did figure out the twist in this one pretty quickly, but I thought it was well written and couldn’t put it down. I think I finished it in two days!

When I first started the book, I wasn't sure what to expect. Before actually reading I hadn't re-read the summary so everything was a shock, which is exactly what I wanted. 

Let's start at the beginning... Nell goes home to Long Island after her father dies and she gets more than she bargained for. The reader gets more than they bargained for as well because I didn't expect this to turn into more than a typical murder mystery. This is so much more than a domestic thriller, in so many ways. Aren't those the best books, though? The ones that start off as one thing and quickly become something else?

Throughout the book, you are taken on this journey with Nell as she is brought in on this serial killer case, but then you see everything start to unravel; Nell discovers that this isn't just a typical serial killer mystery but something deeper, with powerful men, sex workers, and a hidden secret about her father. 

Nell wavers off on her own to solve the case, without the help of anyone because she can't trust anyone besides herself. What she finds out about the place she's lived her entire life, the men she grew up with, and the murder of her mother is not what she expected and truthfully not what I expected either.

There were times throughout the book where I thought I knew what was going on or what would happen but then Alger pulled the rug out from under me. This book is a true journey and you're constantly rooting for Nell to figure things out. 

There are multiple endings to "Girls Like Us"; what I mean by that is that when you think the book is over and everything is calm, something else explosive happens. Then, after that ending, something else is revealed that ties everything up in a neat little bow. 

One of the things I liked most about this book was the setting. That definitely won't be true for everyone but I live in Queens, right on the border of Long Island and I'm there all the time/grew up going there frequently. While I'm not 100% sure if all the places mentioned in the book are real, a lot of the locations are and it was interesting to hear a story that takes place so close to my home. 

I loved the character development of Nell and everyone around her, especially because it made everything that happens so much more exciting and unexpected. As I mentioned before, I was truly addicted to this book. I was about 10 chapters in and then just finished the rest in one sitting over the weekend. I couldn't move until I knew how this story ended and I finished the book feeling totally satisfied. 

I'm confident in saying "Girls Like Us" is going to be one of my top books of the year and I highly advise you all to read it!

I loved this thriller! It was great to see a mixed-race Latina lead and undocumented Latina victims treated with respect. Great mystery and I genuinely didn't see the ending coming, which is rare for the number of thrillers I read!