Hey there friend! Today’s book review is for the title Before She Was Helen by Caroline B. Cooney.

*Disclaimer : I received a copy of this ebook for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Below you’ll find the description of the book provided by NetGalley, followed by my own review and star rating. Enjoy! And, as always, thank you for stopping by today. 💛

This book is available now!

Description :

Her life didn’t turn out the way she expected—so she made herself a new one

When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn’t there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?

And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . in a place where Clemmie wasn’t supposed to be, and where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly, the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present.

From international bestselling author of The Face on the Milk Carton Caroline B. Cooney comes Before She Was Helen, an absorbing mystery that brings decades-old secrets to life and explores what happens when the lie you’ve been living falls apart and you’re forced to confront the truth.

My Review :

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. We meet Clemmie, or Helen, and at first I thought this was going to be a sleepy little novel…but there turns out to be quite a bit of action!

After her teenage years are scarred by the attack of someone everyone around her trusted and loved – Clemmie starts to live a double life in order to escape that past, and her attacker.

He’s clever though…but he crosses one person too many in the end.

There are basically 2 mysteries here – one in the past, and one in the present and they wind around each other throughout. This does make for some slow reading at times, but when a book is good I tend to not care about that as much.

Clemmie gets caught up in both murders…one of them completely by accident – and let me tell you, the murderer caught me by total surprise!

If you’re looking for a book to read while you’re keeping cozy inside – this might make for a good one.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (rounded up from 3.5)