Staff Reviewer: Kimberly
Published Date: April 15, 2022
Number of Pages: 295
Format: Audiobook, e-book
Genre: Suspense
Tags: Young Adult, Paranormal, Thriller, Bookstagram, Booktok, Violence/Abuse
Cardigan rating: 4 out of 5
Thoughts:
First, I have to admit, this was a last minute switch for me, as the original book I had picked for this month, The Case of the Body on the Orient Express by Kelly Oliver, turned out to be… only okay, if I’m being polite. If you are a huge Agatha Christie fan, you may tip over into liking it, but I found that after a strong start, it got far-fetched and repetitive and fizzled out in the end. Ask for Andrea has been a recent darling of Bookstagram, and I was happy to jump into a book that had such good reviews.
It did not disappoint.
I found it fast-paced and easy to read. Surprisingly, there is no real mystery, as we know who the killer is the whole time. He’s James Carson, a good-looking, seemingly charming man who is preying on girls he meets on a dating app. He’s also living a double life, being married with two children. The story is told from the perspective of the last three girls he’s killed, or rather, the ghosts of the last three girls he’s killed. The story strikes a careful balance, depicting the horrors of a serial killer’s actions without veering into overly graphic territory, which I appreciated as someone who prefers suspense over gore. The tension lies in the girls’ desperate struggle to intervene from the afterlife, having no physical way of stopping their killer from striking again. Even for someone like me, who isn’t typically drawn to ghost stories, I found myself rooting for the girls, not only hoping that they got justice, but also that they would somehow find peace in the afterlife.
Ask for Andrea touched the same part of me that is fascinated with news stories about the dangers of online dating—whether it's someone getting catfished, getting scammed out of their life savings, or getting murdered, I always instantly click on it. You would think that by now we would all be hyper aware of how dangerous the internet can be, yet these things keep happening. If you find yourself drawn to those stories like I always am, I think you’ll also enjoy this book. I liked it enough to add another book by the same author to my TBR list, it's highly rated and inspired by true events -Gray After Dark.