The Girl You Want

Written by Carrie Blake

Narrated by Katherine Fenton

You never know what secrets people are hiding.

Isabel: Beautiful. Talented. Bored.

Mathew: Mysterious. Handsome. Dangerous.

For Isabel Archer, dating is a way to pass the time in her otherwise comfortable life. She casts herself as the Perfect Girlfriend for every man she matches with, playing a different girl with a different back-story every night for months. It's innocent – one goodnight kiss before swiftly deleting each profile – until she goes too far.

Mathew likes playing games too. Only the games he wants to play are the kind you don’t always walk away from.

Readers can’t get enough of this book!

‘Amazing book!!!! I could not put this book down from the first page to the last’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘It captivated me the entire time!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Characters that have you guess what's coming up next and glued to the edge of your seat’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Once started you can't put the book down’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I loved it!! You can never guess what’s coming next!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I was completely drawn in, right from the beginning, and ended up finishing the book in one sitting! I loved the back and forth between the two main characters. The plot twists kept me guessing right until the very end’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Previously published as The Woman Before You

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780008527365

Carrie Blake

Carrie Blake works in real estate. This is her first novel.

Reviews for The Girl You Want

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Isabel Archer is the typical girl from the Midwest. Having grown up only with her mother, she has high hopes and big plans for the time after school. She dreams of a career as an actress in New York, but soon finds herself rejected in every audition and due to lack of money selling mattresses. The only moment when she can still take over a role is when she dates men she finds on Tinder. When she meets Matthew, things change, she is immediately attracted by him and definitely wants more. Matthew, too, has some kind of liking for her, but first of all, his boss needs a woman to support him in the little jobs he does for him. Isabel could be the perfect partner for these strange little games. But soon not only Isabel has to asks herself who is playing games with whom. Carrie Blake’s debut novel starts quite interestingly and I immediately could indulge in it. However, I quickly had the impression to find some kind of prop and cliché I had read many times before. Even though Isabel was described in the first chapters as a young, intelligent and aspiring woman, she then is reduced to the dumb girl waiting for the boy to call her. She loses all her independence and there is a huge lack of motivation for whatever. From the attractive woman she turns into a pretty facade with nothing behind it. Matthew however, is simply a handsome and ruthless man who is the marionette of his boss without any will of his own. Thus, I was a bit disappointed in the two protagonists who tell the story alternatingly. The plot itself has variations of “How do I seduce her without having actual intercourse” which was a bit too much for my liking of a thriller. I missed the real thrill and suspense since most of what happens is quite foreseeable as it is based on just a few pieces of information. All in all, I was quite deceived by it, since most of the plot seems to be a pretext for having the characters go to bed and it strongly reminded me of “50 Shades of Grey” in the setting and character make-up.