‘The Prized Girl’ by Amy K. Green

Synopsis

Jenny Kennedy appears to have it all. She’s the perfect daughter, the popular girl at school and a successful beauty queen. But then Jenny is found dead in a murder that rocks the small town she grew up in to the core.

Her estranged half-sister Virginia finds herself thrust into the spotlight as the case dominates the news and is desperate to uncover who killed Jenny. But she soon realises that maybe Jenny’s life wasn’t so perfect after all.

The truth is that Jenny has more than a few secrets of her own, and so do her neighbours… What really happened that night?

 

My Review

I read the synopsis for ‘The Prized Girl’ and it certainly sounded like the sort of psychological crime thriller that I would love.  I wasn’t wrong either because I did thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Prized Girl’ but more about that in a bit.

I was drawn into this story from the moment I read the synopsis alone and as soon as I started to read the story within, that was it.  After that I just couldn’t put the book down.  I loved the fact that Jenny, who was the popular girl at school and who seemingly had the perfect life, had more layers of secrecy and more layers to her personality than you would find on a parcel during a game of ‘Pass The Parcel’.  Open one layer and then half a dozen more appear.  The pages turned increasingly quickly the more of the story that I read.  I totally immersed myself in the story to the extent that I was able to shut out all other distractions and focus solely on the story.  Usually I have the attention span of a gnat and I am easily distracted but not in this case.  There was that much going on that I didn’t want to miss a single second of the story.  I reached the end of the book far quicker than I had anticipated or wanted to.  I had been enjoying the author’s writing style, the storylines and the characters that much that I just wish the book had been longer.

The author has one of those writing styles that is easy to get used to and easy to get along with.  She grabs your attention from the start with an intriguing synopsis and then gradually draws you into the story.  Once she has your attention she will not release it until the moment you read the last word on the last page.  I genuinely felt as though I was part of the story myself, which is in part due to the fantastically realistic and vivid descriptions that Amy used.  I felt that I was helping Virginia solve the mystery of her half sister Jenny and who killed her.  This was one of those books that gripped me throughout and had me on the edge of my seat throughout.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Prized Girl’ and I would definitely recommend it to other readers.  I will definitely be reading more of Amy’s work in the future.  The score on the Ginger Book Geek board a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.