Online Dating Can Be Murder
Florida writer Lisa Unger offers terrified escapism With its brisk pace and layered 2021 got you down? Sick and tired characters (including an “imagof global pandemics, environmental inary friend” from Wren’s childcollapse and the dystopian social hood), “Last Girl Ghosted” is enmores of the internet? Then I might joyable, even as it pushes all your have just the book for you: Lisa Ungfright buttons. Wren narrates in er’s newest thriller, “Last Girl Ghostpresent tense, often directly to the ed.” missing Adam (“Your eyes linger This hair-raising tale follows New on me as you close the door”) creYorker Wren Greenwood, author of a ating a poignant popular advice column, down a dan- “Last Girl Ghosted” isn’t sense of immedigerous rabbit hole so much escape from our acy and loss. The contemthat begins when weird historical moment story’s porary texture she meets Adam as it is immersion therapy. mixes with classic through an dating themes such as jealousy and beapp called Torch. (Does that sound trayal, family conflict, fate and rea bit ominous? It should). Wren falls demption – perhaps not a surprise hard for this serious, soft-spoken, for an author who lists among cybersecurity specialist, who seems her greatest influences Charlotte so different from the endless parade Brontë, Stephen King and Truman of self-promoters she’s met online. Capote. They even share a favorite poet: brilBut how will this help with the liant and broody Ranier Maria Rilke, 2021 blues? whose lines Unger weaves through“Last Girl Ghosted” isn’t so much out the novel. One night, she takes a escape from our weird historical daring step, revealing a long-buried moment as it is immersion therasecret. py. It plunges right into the underWren bares her soul. Then Adam, currents of loneliness, anxiety, and leaving only a cryptic text message, inhumanity that run through our disappears. Determined not to be headlines and our hearts, explorghosted, Wren follows a trail of clues ing a world in which hook-ups are to private eye Bailey Kirk. As she inchthe norm, emotional connections es closer to Adam, Wren must reckon are elusive and the pursuit of ronot only with the terrors of her past, mance requires you to master the but with the realties of her future. art of emotional (and sometimes physical) self-defense. Fiction, as Unger points out, can be a powerful way to process frightening realities.
JAY NOLAN VIA PARK ROW BOOKS
By Amanda Hagood
Lisa Unger’s latest will make you never want to swipe right again.
“I have always turned to the page to metabolize the darkness and chaos I perceive in the world,” she reflects. And I see what she’s saying: As Wren’s heartbreak transforms into a quest for justice – a riveting pursuit that winds through shady spaces in the city and down lonesome country roads, as well as into the wilderness of the dark web – I see the outlines of our real-life search for trust and intimacy in a world where technology has changed the ways we connect to others. Following Wren through the novel’s dark twists and turns might just shed a light on the darkness itself – and it will reward with the novel’s positively electrifying conclusion. Enter if you dare, readers. You might just feel better if you do.
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