Hard Girls is an intriguing novel in one of my favorite sub-genres: espionage thriller. I love a good spy thriller. This is a spy thriller crossed with a female-centric sleuth mystery laced with suspense. (Throw in a splash of sibling fiction, too). 

Hard Girls has a great story. It reminds me of a more mature and less magical The Wilderwomen or Where the Echoes Die, both stories where two sisters who have grown apart go on road trips to search for their (respective) missing mothers. In all three of three books you’ve got a sister who’s more in the know than the other and one who’s a little more jaded than the other. I’d say Hard Girls has more realistic consequences at stake than the other two titles, but I really can’t speak to that. I suspect some folks at Langley would have to do something to me if I knew! 

Where Hard Girls wore thin with me was the frequency of timeline switching. This narrative device is a useful tool in many ways, but I felt like it was used as too much of an expositional crutch in this book. Instead of working to fuel the present-day timeline it seemed more often to just explain the past. The result? Glorified flashbacks. I’m of the firm opinion that 95% of the time flashbacks are lazy writing. In the end, it didn’t matter how well-written the past-timeline chapters were, because they didn’t fuel the present-timeline story. They disrupted the pacing of the story. I also felt like the chapters from Harry’s POV either could’ve been eliminated or his part of the story could’ve been dealt with differently. The story should’ve belonged to Jane and Lila. 

Other than that, the novel is engaging, imaginative, compelling, and a solid read. 

I was provided the eARC of this title by NetGalley and the author. I was provided a finished copy of this title by Mulholland Books and the Novel Suspects Insider’s Club. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.