cover image Girl on the Run

Girl on the Run

Gregg Olsen. Polis (PGW, dist.), $18.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-940610-69-6

Not much is left to the imagination in this grisly thriller from Olsen (Envy). High school sophomore Rylee Cassidy and her seven-year-old brother, Hayden, leave home immediately after she comes home from school to discover their stepfather has been killed and their mother is gone. The siblings aren’t strangers to life on the road—along with their mother, they have been evading a dangerous man for years. As Rylee follows her mother’s clues in an attempt to save her and get revenge, Olsen unspools the disturbing details of this man’s identity and the siblings’ family history through Rylee’s pulpy, hard-edged narration (“He’ll never get to enjoy his fame the way that I will revel in his death”). Thin on character development and heavy on plot machinations, Olsen’s story tends to sensationalize Rylee’s mother’s horrific past as it digs into the mind of a serial killer. Rylee is unflinching in the face of danger but, as a protagonist, she isn’t much else, which leaves the novel reading like the equivalent of a TV procedural. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)