An Anonymous Girl

October 1, 2018
A Manhattan makeup artist signs up for a study about morality and ethics that takes her deep into the danger zone.Using the addictive split narration gambit deployed in their debut, Hendricks and Pekkanen (The Wife Between Us, 2018) tell another tense tale of two female characters. Jessica is struggling to get by in New York City with a job doing makeup sessions in clients' homes. When she overhears that some ditzy college girls she's working on have signed up to take a psychological survey for $500, she breaks into their voicemail while they're out of the room to get the information, then pretends to be one of them when she arrives at the appointment. (Why she didn't just ask them about it we'll never know.) Ironically, the survey contains questions like "Could you tell a lie without feeling guilt?" and "Describe a time in your life when you cheated." Turn the page, and now we're watching Jessica from the other side, from the perspective of the immediately rather creepy researcher, Dr. Lydia Shields, who is already aware of her subject's deception. "This test can free you, Subject 52," she is thinking. "Surrender to it." We quickly learn the survey is just a front for recruiting a susceptible young woman to act as bait in some nefarious schemes Dr. Shields has planned...schemes which may have already led to the death of a woman known as Subject 5. Almost nothing about this story or its characters is believable or makes much sense, from Jessica's naiveté to Lydia's sociopathic tendencies to the awful and life-changing bit of personal history they share. Leave that aside, though, and you can still have a bit of fun watching their game of cat and mouse play out.A harmless page-turner.

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Starred review from October 22, 2018
Struggling Manhattan makeup artist Jessica Farris impulsively decides to chase some quick cash by lying her way into an NYU psychiatrist’s study—of ethics and morality, no less—in this slickly twisty psychological thriller from bestsellers Hendricks and Pekkanen (The Wife Between Us). Still shaky after a disturbing #MeToo encounter with a top theatrical producer that dashed her dream of doing stage makeup, the 28-year-old laps up the supportive attention from impossibly chic and self-confident Dr. Lydia Shields, whose second-person narrative alternates with Jessica’s first person. So when the therapist starts to enlist her in increasingly dicey real-life role-playing assignments, including trying to pick up specific targets, such as a stranger in a hotel bar, Jess pushes aside her doubts and goes along—until she hears some information too alarming to ignore about the fate of Dr. Shields’s previous protégé. The page-turner’s second half whizzes along at a furious pace, exploiting the dual perspectives for maximum tension. Though some of the gasp-worthy final twists require substantial character flip-flops, it’s a relatively minor sacrifice for major league suspense. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders and Assoc.

Starred review from November 1, 2018
The coauthors of the mega-best-selling The Wife between Us (2018) return with another spooky tale of psychological seduction. Two main characters (a makeup artist and a psychology professor) try to figure each other out, with the stakes growing ever higher, as in a David Mamet drama. Jessica struggles to make a living as a freelance makeup artist in New York. Her house calls all over the city give her some street smarts; her profession has made her skilled in sizing up people and what they need almost instantaneously. If she weren't so hard up, she probably wouldn't answer the ad from the psychology professor asking for volunteers to take a survey about morality and ethics. We meet the professor as she observes Jessica taking the survey and silently (and creepily) addresses her in the second person ( you ). The action moves from the psychologist's asking Jessica to take more surveys, with more intimate questions, and then instructing her to engage in real-time scenarios. Jessica's financial need propels her, along with the subtle manipulations of the professor, with whom Jessica slowly becomes obsessed. The movement here from small tests to bigger ones masterfully escalates the suspense. The juxtaposed points of view, with reactions of each protagonist to the other, keep the reader guessing until the end. A great follow-up to The Wife between Us.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 15, 2018

Makeup artist Jess Farris needs money to pay for her sister's therapy after a brain injury. When Jess overhears a client cancel her participation in a psychological study conducted by a respected New York City psychiatrist, the prospect of making easy cash is too alluring, so she lies to take the woman's place. For Jess, now known as Subject 52, it seems like a dream come true, until the study moves into real-life vignettes created just for her, and she discovers that Dr. Lydia Shields has a personal agenda. Danger seems to wait for Jess around every corner, and after sharing so many dark secrets with Lydia, it seems leaving the study is almost impossible. Will she find the one thing she can use to stop the doctor's calculated manipulations? VERDICT For those who relished the creepy stalking in Hendricks and Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us, this unnerving tale will have them rethinking what secrets are safe to share and if morals and ethics really matter when protecting the ones you love. [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/18.]--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2018

When Jessica signs up for an ethics study involving women aged 18-32, she doesn't anticipate that the mysterious doctor in charge will be so dangerously controlling. From the authors of the smash best seller The Wife Between Us; major publicity.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.