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The Girl in Times Square, Paullina Simons
HarperCollins
Review by Jan Treliving-Brown (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

Paullina Simons is my new favourite author and The Girl in Times Square is my new 600-page best friend.

If you haven't already enjoyed something by Paullina Simons, do it now in this order: Bronze Horseman (9 out of 10); Tully (7 out of 10); Red Leaves (5 out of 10); The Bridge to Holy Cross (8 out of 10). Give the appalling (0 out of 10) Eleven Hours a miss. While it's a horrible book, don't dwell on one morbid black sheep.

Back to the marvellous Girl in Times Square. I can say little by way of storyline lest I spoil the mystique. There's central character Lily Quinn, a fragile, wraith-like student who presents opportunity for the author to conduct a wonderfully ethereal personality study.

When Lily meets simultaneously with both windfall and double disaster, her soulmate turns out to be middle-aged Irish detective Spencer O'Malley. And what's he doing in Lily's life? Only investigating the disappearance of Lily's beloved flatmate, Amy.

Spencer is probing hard for details Lily would rather keep buried. She's very unwell. With gritted teeth, she says, "I wish I vanished like Amy. Instant, immediate and irreversible. In many ways I feel like I have been, yet I continue breathing. The people around me have been acting like I've been dead for a year, and they're just waiting for my body to catch up."

I think back over the last week when I've been reading The Girl in Times Square and I realise I've felt sombre. In fact all of Paullina Simons' other novels are sombre tales. Eleven Hours is so sombre it's dead.

Simons writes for the introverts. Dire things happen to her people – Tatiana, Alexander, Tully, Lily, which cause them to go reclusive for long periods to recover. I've concluded they are dark, moody books masterfully put together. I love the way Paullina Simons writes.