The Girl with No Past A gripping psychological thiller by Kathryn Croft

Disclosure: I received a free Kindle version of this book from netgalley.com in return for an unbiased review. I have never read anything by Kathryn Croft before, and now I am so glad I did. The Girl with No Past is a dark and troubling book with characters that are not always what they seem. Leah, the lead protagonist leads a dull life by her own admission, going through her days being unsociable and working at a library. Her life comes across as uninspired and lonely. She is a tough character to like, yet I was sympathetic to her. This book is touted as a psychological thriller, based in London, but is also a character study of what happens to a person when they are haunted by something that happens in the past. Leah's past is slowly catching up to her, and the reader is left waiting to find out what exactly happened until the very end. Croft writes well and used a technique that is quite common today, alternating between present day events and Leah's school days. The plot is well developed and very gripping at times. The reader is left guessing until the end, and unless you are a better reader than I, you will be surprised. Some have compared this book to The Girl on the Train, and Gone Girl, and while I can see some similarities in that the protagonist is not entirely likeable, the main character Leah in The Girl with no Past stands alone as a well conceived and compelling character and the book itself wraps around her attributes with a strong plot with many twists and turns.