The Girl You Know

By: Elle Gonzalez Rose

Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal

Bloomsbury presents The Girl You Know by Elle Gonzalez Rose, read by Victoria Villarreal

A dark academia thriller about who is allowed to break the rules and who suffers the consequences, perfect for fans of Jessica Goodman and Holly Jackson.

The week before Luna’s twin sister Solina was supposed to head back for her final semester at Kingswood Academy, an elite boarding school in the Washington mountains, she told Luna she was dropping out. When Luna refused to let her throw away her future, Solina disappeared.

Twelve hours later, she was dead.

Luna knows Solina’s death wasn’t an accident, even if the police say otherwise. There’s a reason Solina didn’t want to go back to Kingswood, and Luna knows she’ll find the truth there. All she has to do is become Solina. Playing Solina comes easy, but finding answers is far from it. Between the cunning, cruel people Solina called her friends, Luna's budding feelings for her roommate Claudia, and the harsh realization that Solina had dark secrets, getting to the bottom of her sister's murder is more difficult than Luna could have ever anticipated. But when you have nothing left to lose, you’re willing to do anything to get what you want. There’s no limit to how far Luna will go to avenge her sister—even if she has to burn all of Kingswood to the ground.©2025 Elle Gonzalez Rose (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

did not work for me

2.75 stars for The Girl You Know by Elle Gonzalez Rose. I so wanted to like this story of one twin trying to solve the mystery of her sister's death by pretending to be her at the expensive and private Prep School she attended in the days and months before her demise. The plot was so good, but certain aspects of the story seemed juvenile even for YA. For one thing, the overuse of the "switchblade" was repetitive and annoying and then downright maddening. I also felt like the author was trying to be as progressive as possible with a cast full of characters who were either a minority or trans or gay or in prison but when their labels had little or nothing to do with the actual story- it felt a bit manipulative. And to be honest-it comes off more like a label than true character development, IMO, when the author drops it in and then forgets it for the rest of the story (Tiffany, for example). Again, I know this is YA but so was Firekeeper's Daughter and you see where I am going with this. I could have been forgiving of that, though, because I want to support representation in literature, however, it all goes to character development - or a lack thereof. And, lastly, the ending was fairly silly and over the top. I would recommend this for a YA audience except I didn't actually like that every single 16 year old character was either dealing drugs, doing drugs, vaping, and/or having sex consensually or nonconsensually - So, not sure I would recommend it to a young audience, either. Sorry. I hate to give a bad review but this book just didn't work for me.