Review - 'An Anonymous Girl' by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Whew, I have finally made it through this torturous book. I know so many people loved An Anonymous Girl, but I found it to be pretty awful from beginning to end, and I'll try to put into words why.

First, the story is so silly. In it, Jessica signs up for a psych study administered by Dr. Shields to make some money. But then Dr. Shields starts asking odd questions and trying to take the study a little too far. Oooh scary, right? Except if Jessica finds the study strange, she could just stop participating. And she had multiple chances to do so, but due to some toxic co-dependent relationship that she forms with Dr. Shields, instead felt compelled (by herself) to keep going. I was just baffled.

Then there is the stilted and awkward writing style. It's written as first person narration, alternating between Jessica and Dr. Shield's point of view. But Dr. Shield's voice is so odd, because she doesn't refer to herself as "I" or "me", but rather as if she is observing herself with an out-of-body experience. She's so over-the-top with hints of menace and impending doom, I expect her to start cackling.

"You will be stripped bare. You will need to summon skills and strength you may not have known you possessed in the coming weeks."

But she's just talking about a psych study that Jessica can leave at anytime. In the end, Dr. Shields gives a great impersonation as a robotic cartoon villain.

Then we have Jessica's voice. She's constantly second-guessing herself and agonizing over her actions and decisions, but she doesn't gain any insight from all that thinking. She's a people-pleaser and seems hell-bent on pleasing the strange psychologist she just met, even when any regular person's weird-dar would have gone off. Her narration includes so many irrelevant details that it reads like filler the authors included to pad out the book, such as descriptions of random people on the bus, her outfits, the minty-ness of her breath, etc.

Then as the story continues and Jessica realizes that something is off, she doesn't stop participating. Rather, she doubles-down.

"If I can't get out of this trap by pulling away, maybe I need to lean into it."

What?! And as it becomes clear what Dr. Shield's motivations are, they makes no sense too. This is not how people would act in those situations.

In the end, I couldn't find a single thing I enjoyed in this book. The over-the-top story is silly and nonsensical. I can't understand why any of the characters would act the way they do. The writing style is fussy, self-important, and awkward. And the constant foreshadowing of scary things to come with no payoff made the whole thing feel like I'm reading a farce.

Readaroo Rating: 1 star