Book Club - Pip Drysdale’s The Next Girl

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Amongst all my summer reading good intentions I knew that I wanted to find something pacey and fun in a good old fashioned edge of your seat kinda way.

Pip Drysdale has a way with pacey thriller’s. She’s the author of The Sunday Girl, The Paris Affair and The Strangers We Know. She’s been shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award and most importantly she’s got a new novel out called The Next Girl.

So let me read you the byline on the cover of my copy of The Next Girl;

“The only way to protect his next victim is to be his next victim…”

How could you not want to read this book with that intro?! It promises a morally upright hero who's going for a proper takedown of some sticky predator. A badass girl boss of a protagonist whose moral introspection never hides the fact that she’s a stone cold predator slayer, and I was absolutely here for it.

Hero Billie is working her way towards becoming a lawyer. Only hitch is it looks like her actions may have blown her latest case, letting abusive douche Dr Samuel Grange go free. Drinking away her sorrows should have helped but instead Billie has woken up in a strange apartment with less than the desirable amount of memory from the night before.

Putting that seemingly trivial mystery to the side Billie has to figure out how to pay her rent now that her job’s on the line. Oh, and she also has to figure out how to serve some serious extrajudicial justice onto Samuel Grange before some other woman becomes his next victim.

Cue… Billie is going to be The Next Girl (That’s the name of the book!)

I’m having fun with this review because I had fun reading The Next Girl.

Billie’s earnest first person, confessional style narration keeps you going with her heartfelt backstory, overindulgence in naming dropping band names and ridiculously low key revelation of Billie’s vigilantism.

Billie has her own utility belt of gadgets and tricks for taking down the bad guys, which are either annoyingly convenient or frighteningly widespread (and we all need to fear for our data and safety - not necessarily in that order).

Pip Drysdale’s storytelling is designed to hook you in and it does just that. Billie sets us up with all the right plot points so she can knock them down later in the novel. The story gets pretty convoluted whilst still keeping its lightness as Billie flirts with a danger, that as our protagonist we know she likely won’t fall victim to.

With a lot going on the reader gets the satisfaction of watching multiple douchebags get their just desserts. And even at its most convoluted The Next Girl doesn’t go full Keyser Soze on the reader, giving us a fair chance at both keeping up and even guessing the twist.

With plenty of summer still left to enjoy, The Next Girl is a solid read for lazy weekends spent at the beach. Toxic men beware because The Next Girl continues Pip Drysdale’s run of protagonists who are done with your shit.

The Next Girl is available from Simon & Schuster

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