Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger Review: A Taut, Deeply Unsettling Psychological Thriller

Last Girl Ghosted earns its starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly as a psychological thriller that takes a distinctly contemporary anxiety — online dating and digital disappearance — and builds it into something genuinely sinister.

At the center of Last Girl Ghosted is Wren Greenwood, a 28-year-old Brooklyn-based advice columnist and podcaster behind a column called "Dear Birdie." Wren is, as Kirkus Reviews notes, so consumed with guiding others through their personal lives that she barely tends to her own — until her friend Jax persuades her to join Torch, a Tinder-style dating app. There she encounters Adam Harper: enigmatic, attractive, and quoting Rilke in his profile. The relationship deepens quickly, and then Adam vanishes entirely — deleting his Torch profile, disconnecting his phone, erasing every point of contact. What begins as a painful ghosting shifts into something far darker when private investigator Bailey Kirk arrives at Wren's Brooklyn townhouse with a disturbing question: could Adam be connected to the disappearances of three other women, none of whom — nor their money — have ever been located?

The investigation into Adam forces Wren to excavate her own past, including, as Publishers Weekly details, a turbulent childhood shaped by a violent father who insisted his family live entirely off the grid. That backstory is not incidental decoration — it is structurally bound to the novel's preoccupation with hidden identity and the way the past shapes vulnerability. Kirkus Reviews observes that Unger reveals Wren's secrets slowly and deliberately, so that the reader is drawn into Wren's perspective before understanding how much she herself has concealed. The novel's central irony — that an advice columnist expert in other people's emotional lives is blind to the dangers in her own — gives the premise a psychological depth beyond a conventional cat-and-mouse chase.

Both major trade reviewers awarded the novel starred reviews, a meaningful indicator of critical consensus. Kirkus Reviews praised Unger's first-person narration as skillfully constructed, calling Wren an "engaging, witty character," and concluded that while Unger reliably escalates tension toward final-act revelations, Last Girl Ghosted represents a particular peak: the review stated she "spins like Simone Biles — and sticks the landing." Publishers Weekly, in its own starred notice, called it "an enthralling psychological thriller" and declared simply, "Unger is on a roll." The novel also carries the weight of Unger's established reputation: Publishers Weekly identifies her as a Thriller Award finalist, with prior work including Confessions on the 7:45. Criminal Element described the book as "a deeply resonant cautionary tale about dating in a digital age — equal parts clever and creepy." Shelf Awareness called it "deliciously complex." These are consistent, multi-outlet endorsements from named sources, not scattered blog enthusiasm.

The novel's structure — in which almost no character is fully who they appear to be, and in which revelations are strategically withheld — is also the feature most likely to divide readers. Thrillers built on layered deception and dual timelines demand patience with delayed disclosure; readers who prefer earlier anchoring in plot facts or more straightforward narrative chronology may find the sustained ambiguity more effortful than pleasurable. Publishers Weekly also notes that the appealing characters are written to act against their own best interest at key moments — a realistic and psychologically consistent choice, but one that can frustrate readers who want protagonists to behave more rationally under pressure. These are genuine features of the book's design, not flaws per se, but they are worth weighing against a reader's own thriller preferences.

Last Girl Ghosted is designed for readers of psychological suspense who are drawn to contemporary, technology-inflected premises — the dangers of online anonymity, the ease with which digital identities can be constructed and destroyed. Criminal Element's framing of it as a "cautionary tale about dating in a digital age" points accurately to its cultural resonance beyond pure genre mechanics. Readers who engage with questions of identity, family history, and the psychological cost of self-concealment will find those themes running through the thriller architecture. Fans of Unger's previous work will recognize her signature approach: character-driven suspense, carefully rationed revelation, and a final-act payoff that, in this case, multiple major reviewers agree delivers on the book's considerable buildup.