Review: The Third Girl

The Third Girl by Nell Goddin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a free ARC.

This is the first novel in a mystery series set in a small French village. American Mollie Sutton, almost 40, purchases a small property with a rental cottage, after a divorce. She quickly adjusts to life in the small village and begins to make friends. A student at the local art school goes missing, and the village is upset because the missing girl is the third woman gone missing. Mollie is instrumental in solving the mystery of the disappearance.

This series has a lot of potential, but it's not quite there yet. I thought that the author did a terrific job in setting the scene. Her depiction of life in a small village was well-done. Her characters need more development however. Mollie is in her late 30's agonizing about the fact that she's unlikely to have children. Yet her behavior and reactions to events seem to be of somebody who is just out of college. She seems to lack the confidence and self-knowledge you'd expect from someone who has been in the working world and has been married for a number of years. Other characters also have potential, but need to be fleshed out. At the moment they feel more like "outlines." The plot needs to be developed a bit more too. The police and Mollie spend several weeks attempting to figure out who kidnapped the woman, yet there are few details that follow the actual investigation. Most of the investigative details were of the "today we talked to x,y,z and searched a bunch of outbuildings".

I will read the next book in the series which I've also received free, since I liked Mollie, and I do think that there is potential for the series.

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