Synopsis:

The author of the “rich, dark, and intricately twisted” (Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author) The Family Upstairs returns with another taut and white-knuckled thriller following a group of people whose lives shockingly intersect when a young woman disappears. 

Owen Pick’s life is falling apart.

In his thirties, a virgin, and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a geography teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct, which he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel—involuntary celibate—forums, where he meets the charismatic, mysterious, and sinister Bryn.

Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. But the Fours family have a bad feeling about their neighbor Owen. He’s a bit creepy and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night.

Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him, following him in the shadows and learning more than she wanted to know about Roan and his family. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre Maddox disappears—and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.

With evocative, vivid, and unputdownable prose and plenty of disturbing twists and turns, Jewell’s latest thriller is another “haunting, atmospheric, stay-up-way-too-late read” (Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author).

Lisa Jewell’s latest book had me guessing until the end! Last fall I enjoyed reading her creepy The Family Upstairs, so it only seemed fitting that I read Invisible Girl this year. I’d be okay if it became an annual fall tradition! 

“Invisibility was my favorite state of existence.”

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl

Invisible Girl is full of deliciously unreliable characters masquerading as people who have their lives together. Jewell doesn’t shy away from the seedy, dark underbelly of toxic masculinity, but she also had me questioning everything, unsure if things were as they seemed. They very rarely are.

While this is more of a psychological mystery than a thriller, I still couldn’t stop turning pages. I read the second half in a few hours, unable to set it down. It’s hard to review without giving any spoilers away, but I LOVED that almost every character was unreliable. Sometimes when authors try to fill a story with unreliable characters, it doesn’t work. But for me it worked in Invisible Girl.