Last Girl Ghosted

by Lisa Unger

In the book’s prologue, Mia is driving. She has left everything behind that tethers her to her life; she’s off the grid and is on her way to meet Raife, a man her father doesn’t like.

Then we’re into the book. The lead character, Wren,  is at a bar, waiting to meet Adam. Her best friend has convinced her to sign up with a dating app called Torch, and Adam is the third man she’s met through the app.

When he shows up, they feel an instant connection: not like strangers at all. They leave the crowded bar and simply walk and talk, for hours. Adam says he’s not looking for “some soulless Torch hookup”—he walks her to her house and drops her at the door, but before leaving he invites her out for dinner the next evening. Things progress from there; it’s not long before they are clearly in love. He’s sensitive and loving, and Wren has fallen for him hard.

As the weeks pass, they are spending more and more time together, though they still live separately. One morning, Adam says he has something he wants to ask her, and they agree to meet for dinner. Wren goes to the restaurant at the appointed time…but he doesn’t show up. And doesn’t respond to texts or calls. And when she goes to his apartment, a young family is living there. Nobody named Adam lives at that place. Nothing he told her was true.

Then a private detective shows up. He’s looking for someone, a man whose photos look like Adam but who has another name. Wren finally realizes Adam is not the good guy she assumed he was.

Wren is smart and far from naïve. She’s a personal advice columnist who writes under a pseudonym; not many people know she is “Dear Birdie.” And before she was either Wren or Dear Birdie, she was someone else. She has resources and she will use them.

All of these strands pull together as events unfold. Wren searches for Adam and for meaning in her own life, and is willing to put herself in danger to find the answers she’s seeking. This is a complicated story with many layers. I found it totally absorbing and hard to put down.

Lisa Unger is an internationally bestselling author known for her character-driven psychological thrillers. Her characters are often hiding terrible secrets, trying to overcome trauma, or running from a dark past. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages and have sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

Lisa was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1970. As a child she lived in the Netherlands, England and New Jersey due to the nomadic nature of her father’s job with Exxon. She majored in writing and literature at the New School for Social Research in New York. She then spent a decade working as a book publicist in New York, meanwhile fitting in writing "in the nooks and crannies of  life."  During that time she started fleshing out the character who became Lydia Strong in her first novel, but she didn’t get serious about writing until she turned 29. Three years later, in 2002, Angel Fire was published under her maiden name, Lydia Miscione, followed by three more Lydia Strong novels.

She switched to writing under her married name of Lisa Unger in 2006 when she moved to a new publisher, Random House, with Beautiful Lies. Since then she’s written fourteen more novels; Last Girl Ghosted, published in 2021, is the most recent. Lisa lives in Clearwater, Florida  with her husband Jeff, her daughter Ocean , and their labradoodle Jak Jak.  

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