Reading this book immediately brought to mind Baby Jessica’s rescue back in the late 80s. That was a major news event with everyone’s eyes glued to the TV, hoping for the best. Once something like that is over, do you ever wonder what impact the attention has on those involved as the years pass?

In THE GIRL FROM WIDOW HILLS, six year-old Arden Maynor’s life is changed forever when she’s swept away in a storm drain after sleepwalking. After a huge search and media circus, she’s miraculously rescued a few days later, and unfortunately the fame she didn’t ask for never goes away.

Now approaching the 20-year anniversary of the incident, Arden has left her hometown and changed her name to Olivia. The anniversary is putting her under stress, and she finds herself sleepwalking once again. This time, she trips over a dead body in her backyard. What could it mean?

I have mixed feelings about this book. It’s a slower paced novel with a couple of good twists, particularly when the identity of the body Arden/Olivia finds is revealed. For such an intriguing premise, there wasn’t a lot of excitement or suspense in the plot, and I wish the secondary characters would have been fleshed out more. The ending was kind of crazy, not at all what I was expecting! Overall, this was a good mystery that just needed a little more thrill.

I ended up reading this as an audiobook and I loved it. I'm a huge Megan Miranda fan-I've literally read everything she's written. While she used her typical method of balancing history with current events, the use of police reports and media coverage of the past event changed the narrative approach for me. As an avid thriller reader I like when it takes me longer to figure things out and with this one I kept thinking it would go a different direction from where it did. It didn't dethrone the 'All the Missing Girls' or 'The Last House Guest' as my favorites from her but it put up a good challenge. With the problematic mother/daughter relationship it gave me some Darling Rose Gold vibes but it was definitely a more comfortable read (I was anxious but the 'munchausens by proxy' is just a different arena entirely). Miranda fans won't be disappointed and I hope this gets more people on the fan-wagon with me because I really just love her books.

Olivia was 6 when she was swept away by a rain storm. She was found and she and her Mother became national celebrities. 20 years later Olivia begins to question everything she thought she knew. Lots of suspense in this book, but it isn’t a fast paced book. There are questions left unanswered. The ending was a bit abrupt.i would give this book 3 1/2 stars rounded up to 4. Thank you to net galley for a copy.

The Girl from Widow Hills is a gripping thriller that pulls readers into its complex, daring story. The Girl from Widow Hills follows Olivia Meyer, previously known as Arden Maynor, the girl who was trapped in a storm drain after a sleep-walking episode when she was four. Since the incident, Olivia has been trying to escape her past through haunting publicity and fame. To escape her past Olivia moves away from Widow Hills and starts a new life with new friends, trying to never look back on her past. That is, until she is forced to take a closer look into her past due to a series of unhinged events that catapults her right into harm’s way. With two people close to Olivia showing up dead, and a new guy in town with a connection to one of those people, Olivia starts to question who she can turn to and what is really the truth of her past.

Megan Miranda has a way with pulling the reader into the story with just enough of the plot to keep you guessing but to still be unbeknownst as to what will happen next. The book alternates between chapters in Olivia’s present life and interviews, articles, and letters from Olivia’s past. While I really enjoyed the writing style once I got used to it, I did find it a little difficult to understand what the story was. However, Megan Miranda does a great job of luring readers in by giving just enough of the story to keep them interested but not enough to know what to expect next. Megan Miranda created a mind-bending plot twist at the end of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I did not see it coming one bit and it made this book all the more fun. As soon as you think it’s over, the tension drastically builds and creates an anxiety in the reader making them question everything they’ve read so far.

Overall, The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda, was a great book. Megan Miranda created a novel that was easy to read, difficult to put down and left readers constantly wanting to know more. She created an enthralling, complex plot to be supported by intricately involved characters, each with their own story to tell. I really enjoyed this book and I consider this to be one of the top novels that I’ve read this year.

This is my fourth book by Megan Miranda. I have enjoyed each of them, including The Girl From Widow Hills. This one was a definite page-turner, but I found pretty much all the characters a bit exaggerated. Arden/Olivia was running from her past as a child famous for being rescued dramatically after days in a storm drain. Everyone who assisted in the search for her, everyone who prayed for her return, everyone who contributed financially to her single mother to assist before and after her rescue seemed to feel they were owed a piece of her.

Now as an adult, Olivia has changed her name and protects herself from ever having to answer to the crowds wanting to know about her. Her mother, whom she had a fraught relationship with, has recently died. Olivia's self-protection as left her rootless and without a support network. She does find that her kindly older neighbor looks out for her to a fault. Then the man who rescued her from the storm drain as a child comes back into her life, mysteriously, bringing family in tow. Someone is murdered right outside Olivia's house and suddenly the former child rescue victim becomes a person of interest in a murder.

The book follows Olivia as she searches for answers about her childhood forgotten memories around her rescue. She believes her past is somehow related to the murder and events going on at present.

I enjoyed the mystery and the settings. I think the books only flaw that held my rating down a bit is that Olivia was not terribly likable in her prickly manner, and none of the other characters got enough plot time to really grow on me. The Girl From Widow Hills is fast, and entertaining, even if not on my "Best of Megan Miranda" list. I believe it is a great book for escapist summer thrills.

Thanks so much to the publisher for providing an advanced ecopy in exchange for an honest review.

What a twist. Miranda writes an unreliable narrator better than anyone! Page turning and compulsively readable

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic mystery full of twists and turns! I found this mystery to be very perplexing. A girl sleepwalks into the night and is washed off into the dark to be found 3 days later. What happened?! It is not as it seems when almost 20 years later Olivia revisits her memories when she learns that her mother is dead.
The constant leads really had me guessing in this one and the side stories seemed to come from nowhere , until they are weaved together in the end.
Well done and would be enjoyed by fans of thrillers and mysteries! A great summer mystery read!

I did like this book. I liked the setting and the characters. The plot was kind of slow and the end got a little confusing. The hospital setting seemed unrealistic. It seemed like a quiet hospital with not much happening. First book I have read by this author. I will probably try another at some point but this one was average.

I thoroughly enjoyed this psychological thriller by Megan Miranda. The story kept me guessing the entire time. The ending was fast paced and satisfying.

This book hooked me from the first page. What a great thriller. And the ending! I did not see that coming. Highly recommend this book.

3/5 stars

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this e arc.

I really thought that i would like it but, i guess thriller isn't really my genre

I love Megan Miranda, at this point she can write a phone book and I'd read it! This book was so freaken good! Once I started I could not put it down. Great writing, great characters, left me on the edge of my seat and a fantastic ending! All the stars!!! Thank you!

Author Megan Miranda twists a bizarre story around Arden Maynor who 20-years ago, disappeared while sleepwalking during a torrential rainstorm and was miraculously found 3 days later by a reluctant hero. Afterwards she was a marked girl. Wherever she went through her life, until college, she was known as the girl from Widow Hills. Her mother seemed to enjoy the notoriety, she wrote a book that sold well. She went on talk shows and made lots of money off of Arden’s story, but somehow the money, in the end, was gone.

But by changing her name to Olivia Meyer, she had hoped to leave the past behind. She went to college, got a job working for Central Valley Hospital in Heath Care Administration, and found a home in the middle of nowhere next to a neighbor, Rick Aimes, who has his own twisted past. But, at least she has someone to watch over her. Then things happen. First a man seemingly recognizes who Olivia really is. Second, she learns that her mother, who she hasn't spoken to in years, is supposedly dead. As hard as Olivia has worked to shed any association with her past, when she receives a box of her mother’s belongings, her past is reawakened, leading to murder, mayhem, and craziness.

Third, Olivia begins sleepwalking again. She wakes up one night to find herself with a dead body. The media and others begin digging into what really happened to Arden 20 years ago, and if she had anything to do with the man's murder. The worst part of this whole thing is that Arden doesn't remember anything about 20 years ago. Why doesn’t she remember anything about her disappearance? There are so many holes in her story, that someone should have pieced them together before now.

On top of everything, one of her friends quits from her job, disappears, only to turn up dead. Olivia isn't necessarily a suspect, but the cops are keeping a close eye on what happens next. To make matters worse, the dead man’s identity comes out and Olivia is shocked to learn that he's been looking for her for years to warn her. Warn her about what, exactly? The story is narrated by Olivia in the present, media transcripts, newspaper reports, book excerpts, voice mails, & pieced together fragments of the past. Olivia is an unreliable narrator, and there are a lot of holes in her story, some of which are left unresolved in the end. Absolutely blown away by the ending. I was lingering over my review until that ending just smacked me upside the head.

This is what I call a slow burner for sure. Not too much happens to really grab you in the first half of the story if you are like me and don't particularly love slow burners. I kept with it and the second half definitely picks up speed and interest. It kept me guessing until the end. Definitely worth sticking with.

Thank you to NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book for my honest opinion.

This one was just okay. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. I will continue to check out other books by this author, though.

Actual rating: 2.5 out of 5

I really enjoyed the author's previous books (All the Missing Girls and The Perfect Stranger). This book was a total miss for me. It started slow and never picked up. I kept reading, hoping it would get better and more interesting. Nope. The whole story was boring.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Megan Miranda for a copy of "The Girl from Widow Hills" in exchange of an honest review.

I love Megan Miranda's thrillers!
I read this one in one day, couldn't wait to figure out the ending.

Arden is the girl from Widow Hills. As a child she was swept away in a storm and rescued days later from a storm drain. Everyone saw her as a survivor and her story was everywhere.

Two decades later, she's over the attention - changed her name to Olivia and is trying to put her past behind her. When a body ends up in her yard, her life starts to unravel and she learns the truth of what happened all those years ago.

Kind of a rushed ending that I don't feel tied up the whole stories but the other 95% of this one was great!

When 26-year-old Olivia wakes up in her front yard with a dead body at her feet and blood on her hands, she's more than just terrified -- she's worried her past is catching up with her. Olivia was just a little girl named Arden when she made national news when she survived three days in a sewer drain after being swept away by torrential rains while sleepwalking. Twenty years later, and still running from a past that she barely remembers even though it clearly remembers her, Olivia doesn't know what to believe or who to trust, including herself. She thought she knew everyone she kept close -- well, as close as she could considering she keeps everyone at arm's length trying to hide her past from everyone. And she thought she had her sleepwalking under control considering it hasn't happened to her since college. Waking up in her front yard with no recollection how she got there is enough to scare anyone. And it turns out she's not the only one keeping secrets or hiding their past. Olivia's whole life is about to be turned upside down, and in quintessential "crime fiction fashion": Everyone is a suspect... Even Olivia.

Thoughts: This is probably my favorite book by Megan Miranda! There are plot twists for DAYS! Chapters alternate between Olivia's present day and the search/rescue of her as 6-year-old Arden twenty years prior. And seriously, EVERYONE is a suspect! I didn't know whodunnit until the absolute very end. Granted, I try not to guess endings of books because it ruins the reading experience for me, but I honestly thought every single character could have been the killer. Every. Single. One. There were some character relationships and developments I would've liked to see developed further, but was still left satisfied by the outcome. Especially since I did not see it coming AT ALL. I wouldn't say the ending was mouth-dropping shocking, but definitely not obvious in any way, in my humble opinion. Fans of Megan Miranda will enjoy her trademark ever-evolving plot twists, and readers picking up her work for the first time will likely become new fans thanks to a plot that never stops, constantly leaving you wondering just what exactly is going on.

This was my first book by Megan Miranda and it totally took me by surprise! It took me a little bit to fully sink into the story, but I loved the premise and the atmospheric vibe surrounding Olivia and her past. I also did not at all guess where Miranda was heading with the story, and I love being surprised like that. This is a great atmospheric, beach read mystery!

The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda

**Thank you to Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for the chance to review this novel. Thank You!**

Description

Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.

Review
The Girl from Widow Hills is my first book read by this Author Megan Miranda. I was excited to be able to review this as my first story by her. The synopsis sounded interesting plus a lot of people really love reading her work.

The story for me started out a slow which cause some struggle in the beginning to keep my attention. I liked the character developments, and the idea behind the story and was really interested to see how it ended and turned out. There were some really good twists and turns that kept you engaged in the second half of the book. The ending was somewhat predictable as I was able to guess it before hand.

I was able to enjoy the book an I will read more by Megan Miranda before I form a lasting opinion on her writing. This was not my favorite book read this year so far, however it was certainly not the worst. I rated the overall book 3 stars from beginning to end. A fun summertime read for sure.