When two women are murdered in their sleep, Shelby Day, an ambitious investigative journalist, is determined to break the case. It’s not long after she starts covering the murders, that she starts to receive threatening notes at her house, warning her to back off. While taking all the risk, she’s also dealing with her feelings about her cameraman and best friend, Jack. Will Shelby be able to help the police catch the killer, or is she going to become their next victim?

I’m giving this a three star rating because to me, this was an okay book. It wasn’t a gripping thriller, but it wasn’t hard to read and kept things interesting. I did get annoyed with the main character and some of her choices. I think this is a good book for a younger audience. I think I would have enjoyed this more when I was first starting out with thrillers, but compared to the level I’m at now, this was just okay.

Thank you so much to the publisher for giving me the arc of this book to read for an honest review!

This book had me thinking so many things. I absolutely loved it!!

The characters

The characters were well done, you had Shelby the main character who seemed very up her own ass in the beginning but eventually turned out to have more to her. She was very interesting to read about and I loved reading her thought process throughout the events. Her character development was amazing in my opinion.

There were other main characters like Jack and the police officer and of course the people that were interviewed. I thought the contrast and relationship between Shelby and these characters were very well thought through and were just written the right way.

The plot

It was absolutely amazing how the plot made it's way throughout the book. I normally am not one for crime or detective novels but this one had me hooked from the prologue. The prologue was not even a quarter of a page long but I was already hooked. I got so excited to read everything from there. The plot started off with a bang, two murders, oh no! And managed to develop in such a way that it was impossible to see who the murderer was. I had my suspisions but they all ended up being wrong. Absolutely amazing.

Overal thoughts

In the end I would definitely rate this book 5 out of 5 stars for everything I read. I loved every single bit of it and I would recommend this to everyone. This one is definitely going on one of my favourites lists.

Thank you so much for letting me read this early and I can't wait for the release date of this book and I'll make sure to buy it to support both the publisher and the author.

Happy reading!

I liked most of this but it never really impressed me. I did like Shelby but her behavior was all over the place at times and i felt this focused more on her love life at times rather than her actually solving the crime. It had too much happening and needed a subplot being taken out to make it more streamline and less busy.

This was a super frustrating read. The MC was so unlikeable and annoying that I honestly should have DNF'ed but I stuck it out to see who the killer would be and just as I suspected....it was extremely underwhelming.

The writing was choppy, the characters were awful, the romance was atrocious, it was honestly just a mess.

*I recieved this book free for my honest review*

For people who like Natasha Preston or the Stalking Jack the Ripper series then this is a fantastic easy read to satisfy that "murder mystery" vibe you are looking for.

The story flows well and the author does a great job at keeping things moving with no unnecessary filler descriptions to beef up the page count.

The characters are........ slightly annoying. Shelby is all over the place with her emotions and Jack is kind of pushy for where they are. Yet I didnt find myself hating them.

For a book by an author I dont know I'm pretty satisfied and will look up more of her books in the future.

not my cup of tea unfortunately, didn't really hold my attention... had potential, i ended up dnf' the book.

Lost Girl is a wonderful, dark and incredibly rich mystery thriller novel, so well built and fast paced that I wasn't able to put it down till I reached the end. I was absolutely captivated by the atmosphere and characters.

This novel submerges the reader in a landscape so imaginative and detailed that the information of the world building, as complex as it is, never feels forced, and is never difficult to understand or picture in one's mind.

This one is a solid 2 stars for me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good read! The writing was unique and the story definitely kept me entertained. My issue is with the main character. I love unlikable characters, but this one was just awful to the point of no return. Full review coming later.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

This novel was just a mess. I was looking forward to a good YA mystery/thriller but what I got was the messy plot-line of a bad romance movie. For starters, the main character, Shelby Day, is incredibly dislikable. Being pitched as a novel about a strong female investigative reporter I expected to read about a head-strong, intelligent woman, striving for success in a competitive industry. What I got was a paranoid, judgemental and selfish girl who belittle other women for their own strength and success. An example of this is Shelby thoughts about Lily, a budding reporter at the same News stations – “Lily wanted every word she spoke, all of her gestures and inflections, to be polished and perfect for her anchor resume reel. If she flubbed a word, she started over from the scratch. She was passing off a staged performance to potential employees as if it were a real show where she only had one chance to get it right…. It was cheating. But Lily didn’t care about that, she was determined to make it to a big market faster than any of us.” So Shelby’s allowed to be a perfectionist and be also on top but Lily isn’t? Shelby just constantly berates the other women in the novel (i.e. Lily and Kaya). How is this a story about a strong woman working had to develop her reporting career when all she does is judge the other women in the story trying to do the same thing? A couple of pages later she continues this mentally by commenting on Kaya – “With her chipper demeanour, as sweet as a cookies-and-cream cupcake, she really ought to have considered angling to become a weather girl rather than a serious journalist.

Alongside Shelby being complete rude and unlikeable, the plot of the novel itself was a complete mess. Shelby’s constant obsession with her cameraman Jack, made the book feel more like a romance rather than a thriller. I did enjoy the relationship between them. I felt like they were a perfect fit but it was so overwhelming and unnecessary to the book. Along with the romance, I felt like the author combined too many plot points making it difficult for me to enjoy the mystery. It is possible to write a YA triller that combines multiple plot points, if they are all equally fleshed out. In Lost Girl, Krammier does not go into enough detail for you to care about anything other than the mystery. I would have enjoyed this book so, so, so much more if she had gone provided more detail in Shelby’s life as a teenager and her relationship with her family. We didn’t even know she was Russian until about halfway through the book!

The most infuriating thing is after all the detestable things Shelby does in the novel, there is not even an inch of self-reflection or self-evaluation at the end. She got everything she wanted; the boy, the job, the news story, everything. A character with this much of a superiority complex must need a moment of self realisation. I would have enjoyed the novel more if Shelby did.

To end on a positive note, I did enjoy the scenery and the details of the landscape in which the novel was set. The hiking trail and the Alice in Wonderland trail were nice scenes and they worked well with the romance and mystery elements.

This was a fast paced, emotional read with several twists I didn’t see coming. It leans closer to a 4 than a 3 if I were to just focus on the murder mystery part of the story. I struggled with the heavy focus on the self sabotaging behavior of Shelby and the controlling potential romantic partner Jack. The interplay between these two was fun banter at times but also bored on overbearing and codependent. That is my only criticism, the fast paced action was great!

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

I thought this was a fairly solid book and it leans closer to a four star read than three because I did have a good reading experience. Don't let the three stars discourage you! Thank you so much to Holly Kammier and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this!

The story was fairly straight forward. It made reading this in a few sittings much easier. There wasn't anything incredibly nuanced about this book which I appreciated. I wanted a light, quick read and that's what I got. I do wish we got a little bit more from Shelby's background. Every time Shelby referenced some part of her past life I felt like I was missing something. The story really focused on the murders, which isn't bad but it did leave me feeling a little clueless.

I did think Shelby was a real character. Like she felt really authentic to me. Her flaws didn't feel forced and her transition out of those flaws weren't rushed. She made mistakes which forced her to confront some of her issues. I actually really liked her.

That being said a love interest did make some comments about how Shelby lives her life that were a little unjustified. I don't think her being career focused in her EARLY 20s is a character flaw. She is incredibly sympathetic to the victims of the crime at hand and everyone effected. I don't think she's missing out on what is "real" in life. As an investigative reporter she's exposed to so many people from different walks of life. Adding the fact that she is from a wealthy background in a large city and now she's moved to a smaller town for her career. I don't believe these comments were ever properly addressed or called out and it irritated me, especially when it's coming from a man who I wouldn't consider even a steady boyfriend for Shelby at the time. I was at least satisfied when she did find issue with some of his other behaviors.

There were some good conversations on anxiety, PTSD, subtle racism, small town mentality, slut shaming etc. I appreciated how those came about organically. I wasn't crazy about the romance in this book. Our protagonist already had some relationship and attraction to her love interest which didn't help convince me that he was a lovable leading man, but that's totally an opinion. I can see why other people might really like him.

I've never been a reader who lowered the rating because I just knew who was the killer way early into the book. I'm more of a reader who focuses on the build-up instead of the reveal/shock factor. That being said I do think readers will get a little bit of mystery here. There were many possible suspects with multiple motives. There was no point where the reader knew more than the protagonist or vice versa.

Edited and Copied from my Goodreads review.

This was such a fun, suspenseful, fact-paced read. It reminded me of Veronica Mars. I would recommend Lost Girl, A Shelby Day Novel to anyone who loves a great murder mystery.

Lost girl, it’s a book that brought me a mix of feelings! Shelby Day, our protagonist, is a journalist who deeply gets herself involves into a double murder investigation. Throughout the narrative, she tries her best to find the murder, while deal with emotional and family problems. I loved the book, however it seemed starting from the middle of the reading, the events got faster, moment witch demanded an “bigger scenario” to better develop the narrative, mainly when Shelby fallowed a thorny path. Nevertheless, I recommended this book, because the mystery will involve you, as well as Kammier writing will delight you. Thanks for ARC given! <3

I felt like this book was a solid 3 stars. There was nothing bad about the book, but nothing about it blew me away either. The main character's reckless choices got kind of old as the book went on and it was hard to feel bad for her when bad things kept happening. The pacing of the book was a little off; the middle third of the book felt pretty drawn out and the ending felt very rushed. The motivations around the two different attacks that happened to Shelby felt weak or missing to me and the killer's motivations were okay but could have been more developed. For a YA mystery, this book is good but younger readers should be made aware of some of the content before picking up.

Shelby Day works as a news reporter in a smallish town which is struck with two horrible murders of two young women. Shelby takes it upon herself to solve the murder mystery, but it seems like she's being targeted too..

Kammier's story is engaging enough, it starts to build up some suspense but for me the story got too fast-paced towards the middle part of the book, it built slow with threatening notes being sent to Day and then she's assaulted. I also didn't get why she was being targeted? It was very, very unclear to me.

All in all, an okay story, but nothing I'd recommend to adult audiences who might think this to be too youngish, perhaps this could instead be turned into a YA-mystery story?

It was good. I didn’t have a problem staying interested. It wasn’t my typical read, but I’d consider reading more from this author.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for my honest review.

So good, this was a book that kept me on my feet - i always wanted to know what came next! Thank you for providing me with an e-arc of this book to review!