Review: Girl Forgotten by April Henry

Author: April Henry    
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Publication Date: March 2023

Piper Gray starts a true-crime podcast investigating a seventeen-year-old cold case in this thrilling YA murder mystery by New York Times bestselling author April Henry. 

Seventeen years ago, Layla Trello was murdered and her killer was never found. Enter true-crime fan Piper Gray, who is determined to reopen Layla’s case and get some answers. With the help of Jonas—who has a secret of his own—Piper starts a podcast investigating Layla’s murder. But as she digs deeper into the mysteries of the past, Piper begins receiving anonymous threats telling her to back off the investigation, or else. The killer is still out there, and Piper must uncover their identity before they silence her forever. 

Girl Forgotten is a YA mystery that involves Piper as she tries to solve a seventeen year cold case murder.  She is living with her father and stop family in a new town.  As a part of her senior project, she starts up a podcast to investigate a cold case.

This ended up being a really enjoyable YA mystery.  This one worked very well as an audiobook, because the podcast portions of the book were performed as if they were an actual podcast. It really added to my enjoyment of the book.  About halfway through the book, I had an idea of who the killer was and I ended up being correct.  But that didn't lessen my enjoyment of the overall story.  I enjoyed the characters as well as the pacing of the story overall.  I highly recommend this one.

Joint Review: The Body in the Woods by April Henry

by:  April Henry
published by:  Henry Holt & Co.
publish date:  June 17, 2014

Alexis, Nick, and Ruby have very different backgrounds: Alexis has spent her life covering for her mom’s mental illness, Nick’s bravado hides his fear of not being good enough, and Ruby just wants to pursue her eccentric interests in a world that doesn’t understand her. 

When the three teens join Portland County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue, they are teamed up to search for a autistic man lost in the woods. What they find instead is a dead body. In a friendship that will be forged in danger, fear, and courage, the three team up to find the girl’s killer—before he can strike one of their own.


I wish they had these kinds of books when I was a kid.  I really liked the idea of SAR.  That's something that I would have been all over when I was younger. It looks like this is the beginning of a series, so I approve of that.  It reminded me of the old Christopher Pike and RL Stein books that were starting to come out when I was in Middle School.  Those books were so awesome.  I could see these books being just as popular.

I enjoyed The Body in the Woods and definitely recommend it. It is a book I would have loved in late middle school and even into high school.  I was a fan of Christopher Pike and I agree with Autumn that this had the same feeling.  I liked the suspense as I thought it was intriguing enough to engage the YA level crowd.

I also liked the characters.  None of them were perfect or from the "beautiful crowd".  The face and person they projected to the outside world was so different from who they really were.  I felt like that would really resonate well with the the teen readers.  It looks like it is going to be the first in a series, so I am interested to see what comes next.

The Night She Disappeared by April Henry

by:  April Henry
published by:  Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
publish date:  April 10, 2012

Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also works part time as a delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza. One night, Kayla—another delivery girl—goes missing. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her, and she becomes obsessed with finding Kayla. She teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead—and to find her before she is.

April Henry does an excellent job with the YA suspense genre.  I read Girl Stolen awhile back and thought it was great read.  The Night She Disappeared is very good.  I was hooked from the beginning.

The story is told from multiple viewpoints so the reader knows what's going on in everyone's head.  It's also told from 911 calls, transcripts of interviews, and other interesting items like police evidence.  This was a unique story telling method that I thought was quite effective.

The other reason I find April Henry to be impressive in the YA genre is that she keeps it clean while still appealing to a wide audience.  I wouldn't have a problem with my 10 year old reading this book.  There were some vague sexual references, but I think kids would take it a different way than adults would.  There was no vulgar language and the violence was fairly minimal.  Boys would probably like this book too, but might be turned off by the jacket summary because it sounds like it's all about Gabie and Kayla, which it isn't...half of it is told from Drew's point of view. 

Overall, it's a solid suspense novel and I definitely recommend it for the mystery lovers.

Stolen vs. Girl, Stolen

I've had both of these YA books on my TBR list for awhile so I decided to read them back to back to see how they compared.

Both involve the abduction of 16 year old girls.  In both books the girls are white, upper class, low-risk, fairly well adjusted teenagers.  Both were good books and fairly suited to the target audience although I'd say Stolen was more mature than Girl, Stolen.  In both books the girls are strong and attempt to get away from their captors, but in the end also develop sympathy toward their kidnapper, however my reaction to each kidnapper was a little bit different.

The biggest difference is that Cheyenne of Girl, Stolen is blind and Gemma of Stolen is not.  That adds an interesting dynamic to the story, how to identify her captors and get away.  Cheyenne remains in roughly the same area she is kidnapped from, but Gemma who is from London is kidnapped from a Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian desert.  She is taken very far from home.  This, however, is what made Stolen my favorite of the two books.  The descriptions of Australia, the land, the plants, the animals are what set  this book apart and made it much more interesting.  The dynamic that developed between Gemma and Ty was really frustrating and I was almost rooting for Ty in the end.  It was like I had Stockholm Syndrome too.

I've only done a tiny compare and contrast, but it'd probably make a fairly decent English paper for any teenagers out there casting about for a topic.  I'm sure there are a few more books out there to throw in.  I enjoyed both of these books, they were quick interesting reads that I'd recommend.