AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “I absolutely loved Invisible Girl—Lisa Jewell has a way of combining furiously twisty, utterly gripping plots with wonderfully rich characterization—she has such compassion for her characters, and we feel we know them utterly… A triumph!” —Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone returns with … bestselling author
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone returns with an intricate thriller about a young woman’s disappearance and a group of strangers whose lives intersect in its wake.
Young Saffyre Maddox spent three years under the care of renowned child psychologist Roan Fours. When Dr. Fours decides their sessions should end, Saffyre feels abandoned. She begins looking for ways to connect with him, from waiting outside his office to walking through his neighborhood late at night. She soon learns more than she ever wanted to about Roan and his deceptively perfect family life. On a chilly Valentine’s night, Saffyre will disappear, taking any secrets she has learned with her.
Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his thirties and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct—accusations he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure.
Owen lives across the street from the Fours family. The Fours have a bad feeling about their neighbor; Owen is a bit creepy and suspect and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Could Owen be responsible? What happened to the beautiful missing Saffyre, and does her disappearance truly connect them all?
Evocative, vivid, and unputdownable, Lisa Jewell’s latest thriller is another “haunting, atmospheric, stay-up-way-too-late read” (Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author).
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The Fours family has moved to an exclusive rental flat while their new home is being built due to damage from a sinkhole while insurance is covering their living expenses. They have lived in their new environment for almost a year and in the past few months there has been several daylight sexual attacks on young women. The Fours daughter felt as if she was being followed one early evening while walking home after taking the nearby tube, and she thought it was her creepy neighbor Owen Pick, since she saw him go into the property across the street. Owen has been referred to as being strange by others in the neighborhood and rumor has it he was suspended from teaching school due to some alleged sexual misconduct which he vehemently denies. Unbeknownst to the Fours family they are currently being watched by a young teenage girl (hiding in the shadows) who was a former patient of Roan Fours who was her psychiatrist for over three years and afterwards she was experiencing feelings of abandonment when she was finally given the clean mental bill of health to move on with her life. Was someone also hiding in the shadows stalking young Sapphyre Maddox because now Sapphyre has disappeared and the last one to see her was Owen Pick who said she was outside the Fours home the night she disappeared.
This book was crazy good. I couldn’t read it fast enough, yet I didn’t want it to come to an end either. Lisa Jewell is a fantastic writer and I have enjoyed every book that I have read by her and can’t wait to read all her books in the future. The story draws you in from the first page and never lets you down with all the wild twists and turns and terrific characters. The book also had a fantastic, climatic ending that I didn’t see coming and I just have to say this is a “Must Read” and I highly, highly recommend it to all mystery, thriller or suspense lovers!
I want to thank the writer “Lisa Jewell” and the publisher “Atria Books” and of course Netgalley for the opportunity to read this amazing book and any thoughts and opinions given are unbiased and mine alone!
I have given this book a rating of 5 Mesmerizing Stars!!
I think it was hard to put down. I just wanted to keep reading it. I was sad when it ended.
Keeps one guessing as to who done it
It was o.k.,I’m just tired of reading about people with so much angst.
Psychological thriller. Very good character development.
Invisible girl by Lisa Jewell is the first novel I have read by this author, but it will not be the last! The characters are intriguing, the story line is very twisted and unpredictable! I loved the tension and suspense her writing generated. I can’t wait to start another in her backlist.
Interesting characters.
This is the first book I’ve read by Lisa Jewell and I’ll be adding more to my list. The characters are realistic and relatable, if not necessarily likeable. The author shows how vulnerable people can be judged and drawn into unspeakable difficulties. I found the insights into the dark and misogynistic world of the incel especially revealing. If you don’t know what an incel is, read the book and find out.
I am a big Lisa Jewell fan! I love her writing. This was a haunting story! Cate’s life seems idyllic. Two teenagers and her husband Roan. They seem to be living the perfect existence There are many stories intertwining here. We have Saffyre, the 17 year old former patient of Roans, our invisible girl. Owen, a sad and single man that lives across from Cate and Roan, and Cate and Roan’s story. Little stories that intersect in big ways. This was a surprising book to the very end. I read it in one sitting and look forward to Lisa Jewell’s next engrossing story!
This was an incredible book that just drew me in and kept me hooked. There were twists and turns that had you second guessing who was responsible the whole time and details are let out little by little from the three voices of the book. The suspense was present the entire book, just pulling me on the journey of what happened to Saffyre Maddox.
My Review of Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell; published by Atria Books
Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell was quite the suspenseful thriller. Lisa created a story full of suspense with a sense of “creepiness” throughout the entire story. I can’t stop thinking about how this book would work well for a book club as there’s multiple issues guaranteeing a convoluted cast of characters as well as twists that’ll keep you turning the pages. I recommend Invisible Girl for anyone ready for a suspenseful read.
#lisajewell
#atriabooks
Invisible Girl is told in the point of view of three of the characters; Cate, Owen and Saffyre. The different points of views immersed me further into the story as we tried to solve what happened to Saffyre. The story was told in a before the night and after the night which gave some great lead up. I had no idea the whole way through the story how it was going to play out.
Invisible girl was a great novel. The first I have read by this author. It has a great story full of interesting characters
This is a book that needed to be written. One of the most disturbing aspects of our society today is the tendency to blindly believe what we are told without questioning it. Without thinking through the words, and examining the motives behind them. If a woman says a man did something sexual, we are told to believe her. Don’t doubt, that’s blaming the alleged victim. Don’t wonder if it was a misunderstanding, that’s gaslighting. Just accept her word and condemn the alleged perpertrator without evidence or examination. But what if he’s done nothing wrong, and the whole situation spins wildly out of control?
In Invisible Girl, that’s the situation Owen Pick finds himself in. After a few drunken encounters and some thoughtless comments, this mild mannered teacher finds himself accused of professional misconduct and suspended from his job as an instructor at a vocational school. Angry and upset at this injustice, he seeks solace in the online community of incels, men who, for various reasons, feel cut off from intimacy with women despite a desire to establish relationships. And from there, his life begins to unravel. A neighbor reports him as a possible perpertrator of the molestation of teenage girl. Then another girl disappears, and Owen finds himself the subject of a full blown criminal investigation and all the nightmares that implies. All because a couple of girls thought he was creepy.
Some who read this book will say it’s not really about Owen. It’s about Saffyre Maddox, the girl who is obsessed with her therapist and tries to be invisible. It’s her story, and how she takes back power from someone who victimized her as a child. The girl who disappears, both deliberately and accidentally. And it is. Saffyre weaves in and out of the darkness, literally and figuratively, like a wraith. Her story intertwines with that of her therapist’s family, and the suspicions of his wife. But as you unravel the threads connecting all these people another story takes place. One of a society that has, perhaps, taken issues of sensitivity and feminism a bit too far and must now confront a nasty backlash.
I don’t think that’s the story Lisa Jewell intended to tell. Her ending is one where everyone does the politically correct thing, and men are either punished or reformed. But it’s the story many readers will find. It’s a cautionary tale, of the dangers of innuendo and making assumptions based on nothing more than a person’s appearance. And of making accusations based on perception instead of finding the truth of an experience. The creepy neighbor across the lane may be a sex offender. But he may also be a slightly autistic introvert who prefers staying in, or a relatively normal person who keeps to themselves. The danger in Invisible Girl isn’t the sexual predator roaming the streets, or the serial adulterer with a dark side. It’s a society that is all to willing to believe the worst about someone just because they have a penis. And that is truly frightening.
I kept reading to see how the characters would discover the bad guys. Changing the narrators was a good technique.
I was very disappointed with this book
Book Review: Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell (2020) (Psychological Thriller) 4 Stars ****
Somewhere in England, seventeen-year-old Saffyre Maddox is a very troubled girl haunted by a childhood sexual trauma, orphaned, but lovingly raised by her uncle and a grandfather who has recently passed
away. Saffyre stands at the middle of this story—the catalyst for most of the action and the eyes for what is mostly hidden from view. The action comes to a head on Valentine’s night when all the characters are pulled into a complex scenario that unknowingly involves all the players in this small community. Saffyre has suddenly disappeared. There is a sexual predator on the loose. Is Saffyre a victim or just a self-centered, immature teenager indifferent to the suffering she causes? What is the significance of the ever-present, always watching fox with its glowing night eyes and hesitant friendships?
Focus is on thirty-three-year old Owen Pick, a science teacher who has recently been suspended from his job for reported sexual misconduct with female students. Categorically denying all charges, Owen lacks self-awareness as to his psychological profile and how his fractured past has carried over into his present actions, of which he has little memory, especially after a few drinks for which his body has no tolerance. Owen unwisely aligns himself for a very short time with an incel group, i.e., involuntary celibate men who harbor thoughts of extreme hatred and violence against women. Innocent or pervert? At the very least, Owen is creepy and inappropriate, but …?
Across the street from Owen live the Four family: child psychologist Roan, his mostly stay at home wife Cate, their snippy teenage daughter Georgia, and their angelic son Josh. This family is at odds with one another. Mistrust, lying, covering up, a lack of communication are the norms. Something is definitely wrong. Cate begins to suspect that her husband and son might be the sexual predators roaming the dark streets to molest unsuspecting women and girls. Hmmm.
The attention of the police is focused on the block where Owen and the Four family live. Investigations prove to be fruitful as each interview reveals another layer of complex relationships. Oh, what a tangled web we weave …. Is the dark shadow figure following me, or am I imagining things? Am I guilty of the accusations or am I being railroaded into a confession? Are my recollections reliable or am I blocking unpleasant facts? Is that a shadow or is someone actually there? Should I report this or keep it to myself?
The story is told from alternating viewpoints. Saffyre in the first person; Owen and Cate in the third person. The story is tightly told with all plot points neatly threaded and resolved. A thoroughly enjoyable story that sometimes seems a little slow. Surprisingly, the story lacks suspense. The characters are unlikable because they cannot be trusted in their assessments of the situation. Like real people, the characters are flawed and running a game to protect their little worlds.
Significance of title? Saffyre tells us, “It was like I was Superman or something, with my two different personas. By day I was Saffyre Maddox, aloof but popular, mild-mannered A-grade student. By night i was a kind of nocturnal animal, like the human equivalent of a fox. My superpower was invisibility. There in the playground at school, or in the sixth-form common room, all eyes were on me, but at night I did not exist. I was the Invisible Girl. Invisibility was my favorite state of existence.”
Can we ever completely recover from character defamation? Are we to be judged by the actions of our family members? Do we have a moral obligation to reveal what we know even if it might implicate those we love? Should serving our own needs come first? Are we ever justified in exacting revenge on those who have hurt us? Can we always tell the saviors from the predators? So many questions, so few answers.
This book was so interesting to read! It was like taking a long ride up that winding and turning mountain. You never know what’s coming at you from around the bend! Once you are sure you have a clear view of everything, BAM there is something coming at you again! I really enjoyed this book. Thanks for writing such a great book!
Saffyre has had a pretty rough childhood. She’s been the victim of sexual assault that she has never disclosed to anyone, grew up without any parents, and feels like a complete burden on her uncle who’s not much older than her and has become her primary caretaker. Saffyre had reached such a dark time in her life, she was in need of some therapy, and became a patient of Dr. Roan Fours. After a few years of visits, Dr Four deems Saffyre ready to stop her sessions, but she isn’t so sure she agrees with him. After their last appointment, Saffyre starts to become more and more interested in Dr Fours’ life outside of being a therapist and even starts to follow him and watch him as well as family. Owen Pick is a neighbor of the Fours. A loner type of guy who is a professor at a college. With no friends, no steady relationship, and recently losing his job after a suspension pending an investigation regarding his behavior towards another student, the man just seems downright creepy. According to the Fours daughter, he is even a creepy stalker type who has followed not only her but a friend as well making them uncomfortable to say the least. One chilly Valentines Day, Saffyre goes missing. The last to see her? Mr Owen Pick, just outside of the Fours residence. What was Saffyre doing in her old therapists neighborhood, and right in front of his residence at that? Suddenly Owen is the prime suspect of the disappearance of young Saffyre. Did he really have something to do with her disappearance? Where is Saffyre Maddox?
This was one of my books I received from BOTM. I was so excited to finally get the chance to read this book and it most definitely did not disappoint! Lisa Jewell did an amazing job. This book definitely had me from the start. I would recommend this as a must read! I rate this book
Lisa Jewell novels are my new addiction. I began with INVISIBLE GIRL and fell in love with her writing style. She builds up suspense gradually, ending every chapter with a mystery that keeps the reader hooked. More importantly, I love her characterizations, which are sympathetic, complex, and fascinating. The two books I’ve listened to so far (the other is “I Found You”) were unique stories but shared the same qualities of terrific character development, suspenseful plot, and beautiful, succinct writing.
In both cases I’ve listened to the audiobooks, and the narrators (three different ones in this book) have been wonderful. I can’t wait to listen to another.