Anonymous Girl (Hendricks-Pekkanen)

An Anonymous Girl 
Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen, 2019
St. Martin's Press
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250133731 


Summary
Looking to earn some easy cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a test subject in a psychological study about ethics and morality. But as the study moves from the exam room to the real world, the line between what is real and what is one of Dr. Shields’s experiments blurs.

Dr. Shields seems to know what Jess is thinking… and what she’s hiding.

Jessica’s behavior will not only be monitored, but manipulated.

Caught in a web of attraction, deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.

From the authors of the blockbuster bestseller The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl will keep you riveted through the last shocking twist (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Greer Hendricks
• Birth—ca. 1968
• Raised—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Connecticut College; M.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York

Greer Hendricks spent over two decades as an editor at Simon & Schuster. Prior to her tenure in publishing, she worked at Allure magazine and obtained her Master's in journalism from Columbia University.

Greer's writing has been published in The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. The Wife Between Us is her first novel. (From the publisher.)

According to Publishers Weekly, Hendricks worked with Sarah Pekkanen on Pekkanen's 2010 debut novel, The Opposite of Me. The two formed a close friendship and went on to publishd six more of Pekkanen's novels.

When Greer left publishing in 2014, Pekkanen was one of the few who knew of Hendrick's desire to write. Co-authoring a book with Hendricks, Pekkanen believed, would up her own game. So began their collaboration on The Wife Between Us (2018), followed up with An Anonymous Girl (2019).

Sarah Pekkanen
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Raised—Bethesda, Maryland
• Education—University of Wisconsin; University of Maryland
• Currently—lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland


Sarah Pekkanen was born in New York City, arriving so quickly that doctors had no time to give her mother painkillers. This was the last time Sarah ever arrived for anything earlier than expected. Her mother still harbors a slight grudge.

Sarah’s family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where Sarah, along with a co-author, wrote a book entitled "Miscellaneous Tales and Poems." Shockingly, publishers did not leap upon this literary masterpiece. Sarah sent a sternly-worded letter to publishers asking them to respond to her manuscript. Sarah no longer favors Raggedy Ann stationery, although she is sure it impressed top New York publishers.

Sarah’s parents were hauled into her elementary school to see first-hand the shocking condition of her desk. Sarah’s parents stared, open-mouthed, at the crumpled pieces of paper, broken pencils, and old notebooks crowding Sarah’s desk. Sarah’s organization skills have since improved. Slightly.

After college, Sarah began work as a journalist, covering Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, Sarah could not understand the thick drawls of the U.S. Senators from Alabama, resulting in many unintentional misquotes. Sarah was groped by one octogenarian politician, sumo-bumped off a subway car by Ted Kennedy, and unsuccessfully sued by the chief of staff to a corrupt U.S. Congresswoman. Sarah also worked briefly as an on-air correspondent for e! Entertainment Network, until the e! producers realized that Capitol Hill wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what one might call sexy.

Sarah married Glenn Reynolds, completing her rebellion against her father, who told her never to become a writer or marry a lawyer.

Sarah took a job at Gannett New Service/USAToday, covering Capitol Hill. Sarah was assigned to cover the White House Correspondents Dinner and rode in the Presidential motorcade to the dinner. Sarah convinced a White House aide to let her stick her head out of the limousine moon-roof during the ride and wave to onlookers. Later, her triumph was tempered by the fact that bouncers would not allow her into the Vanity Fair after-party. Sarah attempted entry three times in case the bouncers were just kidding.

Sarah took a job writing features for the Baltimore Sun, and interviewed the actor who played Greg Brady. She refrained from asking if he really made out with Marcia, but just barely.

Sarah and Glenn’s son Jackson was born. He arrived too quickly for Sarah to receive painkillers, and Sarah was pretty sure she saw her mother smirking. When Glenn put a loving hand on Sarah’s shoulder during the throes of labor, Sarah decided the most expedient way to get Glenn to remove his hand was to bite it, hard. She was proved right.

Twenty months later, Sarah and Glenn’s son Will was born. Three weeks later, Sarah and Glenn moved into a new home and renovated the kitchen. Two weeks later, Glenn caught pneumonia and simultaneously started a new job. Ten days after the kitchen renovation was complete, the kitchen caught on fire, and Sarah, Glenn and family moved to a hotel while renovation began anew. Sarah and Glenn decided to work on their "timing" issues.

Having left her journalism job to chase around the ever-active Jack and Will, Sarah started writing a column for Bethesda Magazine and began work on a novel. She did not write it on Raggedy Ann stationery.

Her first book, The Opposite of Me, came out in 2010 and her second, Skiping, a Beat in 2011. Those were followed by These Girls in 2012, The Best of Me in 2013, and Catching Air in 2014.

Sarah gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, Dylan, and  gets a little weepy every time she contemplates her good luck. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Psychological suspense is a genre that needs to be handled with kid gloves. Too much reality—or too much foolishness—and the pact made with the reader to believe in the unbelievable is broken. Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seem to have mastered the formula in An Anonymous Girl, a creepy-crawly tale about putting your trust in a stranger; specifically, in a strange psychologist.… The authors know exactly how to play on their characters' love of danger to bring them to the brink of disaster—and dare them to jump off.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review


(Starred review)  The page-turner’s second half whizzes along at a furious pace, exploiting the dual perspectives for maximum tension. Though some of the gasp-worthy final twists require substantial character flip-flops, it’s a… minor sacrifice for major league suspense.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) For those who relished the creepy stalking in Hendricks and Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us, this unnerving tale will have them rethinking what secrets are safe to share and if moral and ethics really matter when protecting the ones you love.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Masterfully escalates the suspense… keep[s] the reader guessing until the end. A great follow-up
Booklist


Almost nothing about this story or its characters is believable or makes much sense…. Leave that aside, though, and you can still have a bit of fun watching their game of cat and mouse play out. A harmless page-turner.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. If you were in Jess’s shoes, would you have snuck into Dr. Shields’s morality and ethics survey? Why or why not? After the questions started to become more invasive, do you think you would have continued answering them, or looked for a way out?

2. What did you think of the authors’ decision to use the second person "you" in Dr. Shields’s chapters? How did it affect your experience of reading the novel? Did it change your perception of any of the characters, especially Dr. Shields?

3. Early in the novel, Jess thinks, "Sometimes an impulsive decision can change the course of your life. "Do you agree? Have you ever made any impulsive decisions that dramatically affected your life? What were they?

4. On page 202, Jess asks, "How do you know if you can really trust someone?" What do you think—how do you know? Can you ever know? What about someone makes them seem "trustworthy" to you?

5. Do you think Dr. Shields truly had a good marriage, or was it doomed from the beginning? Why do you believe this, and what about Dr. Shields informs your thoughts?

6. Did you have an idea of what had happened to Subject 5, or were you surprised? If you did suspect what occurred, can you point out what kind of foreshadowing or clues led you to this conclusion?

7. What did you think of Dr. Shields’s morality and ethics questions? Did you find yourself answering them? Which question did you find the most challenging?

8. An Anonymous Girl explores the lies that link people together and the damage these deceptions can cause. Is it ever okay to tell a lie? When does a secret become a deception?

9. How much of a motivating factor was money for Jess? In your opinion, was the money Jess earned worth what she endured? Can trust ever really be bought?

10. At the start of the novel, one of Dr. Shields’s questions to Jess was, "Do victims have a right to take retribution into their own hands?" How would Jess and Dr. Shields answer this question at the end of the book? How would you answer it?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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