The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel

The Forgotten Girls
by Sara Blaedel
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Published by: Grand Central Publishing - January 7, 2015
Rating: 3.75 Stars

NOTICE: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

In a forest in Denmark, a ranger discovers the fresh corpse of an unidentified woman. A large scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. After four days, Louise Rick--the new commander of the Missing Persons Department--is still without answers. But when she releases a photo to the media, an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and branded a "forgotten girl." But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates over 30 years ago. As the investigation brings Louise closer to her childhood home, she uncovers more crimes that were committed--and hidden--in the forest, and finds a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed.

Mystery/Thrillers are a favorite of mine, so I was glad to be chosen to read this arc.

This was originally written in Danish and the arc version is a translation of the original. My biggest "complaint" about the novel is that being a dumb American, the Danish names and cities were hard for me to pronounce or understand. That language uses different symbols than we do in English and my little pea brain found it difficult to differentiate cities and people at times. In a perfect world, the names and/or cities would have been anglicized so that my brain didn't have to spend so much time deciphering words and could just enjoy the story.

I found the first 50% of the book a bit slow. There was a lot of exposition and the information seemed to elude that there had been other books by the author starring Louise. A quick google search after I finished confirmed that theory. One thing that I felt lacked in the beginning was that I really had no idea what age any of the main characters were. Is Louise in her 30's? Her 40's? How old is Eik? I wanted to know those details so that I could further understand the characters. Also, I knew what Eik looked like, but I didn't know Louise had long hair until almost the end of the book. I wanted a bit more there.

50% into the book and on, the story shifted into high gear, and I loved every second of it. I honestly had no idea how all of the clues fit together and didn't know until the very end who the perpetrator was. The sad part of it all is that this could very well be a true story today. You'll have to read the book to find out what I mean.

Overall, if you think you can get past names like Eik and cities I can't even type here because they involve characters I don't know how to type, you should check this book out. It's a great thriller.