I turned to another Jess Lourey thriller, The Quarry Girls, after absolutely loving Unspeakable Things. I’d heard The Quarry Girls was even better, which gave it a lot to live up to.
I was not disappointed. In fact, this one might have just moved into the top spot.
Amazon Summary
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.
Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can’t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger.
She also knows she’s next.
My Thoughts on The Quarry Girls
Warning: There are major spoilers ahead!
Where do I even start with this one?
The Quarry Girls was beyond good. This might honestly be my new favorite thriller. I absolutely devoured this book. I could not wait to get to the end, and I mean that in the very best way. I wasn’t rushing because I wanted it to be over. I was rushing because I HAD to know what happened.
Jess Lourey had me before the story even really got going. At the beginning of the book, she talks about the real serial killers who operated in Minnesota during that time period and some of the real-life inspiration behind the story. I was already fascinated.
And then we meet Heather.
Heather is a young girl growing up in Pantown, Minnesota, in 1977. Her world initially feels pretty small. There are her friends, her family, the quarry, the tunnels beneath the neighborhood, and all the familiar people around town.
But that familiar world starts falling apart piece by piece.
We primarily follow Heather, but we also get glimpses of Beth, a young woman who has been abducted by a man who regularly sat in her section at the diner where she worked. Beth is being held somewhere underground, fighting to stay alive, while Heather is trying to figure out what is happening to the girls around her.
And there is SO MUCH happening.
Heather’s two best friends disappear and are eventually found murdered. Beth is still missing. Heather knows something is very wrong, but figuring out who she can trust becomes almost impossible.
Lourey gives us person after person to question. There’s Heather’s sister Junie and her friend Claude. There’s Ed, Ricky, Ant, Eddie, and others around Pantown who may or may not know more than they’re saying. There’s Jerome, the police officer Heather doesn’t trust.
Then there are Heather’s own parents.
Her mother often seems to be somewhere outside of the world around her, and as the story unfolds, we begin to understand more about why. Heather’s dad, meanwhile, is the county attorney and someone Heather has always looked up to.
That might have been one of the most heartbreaking parts of the entire book for me.
Because Heather isn’t just uncovering what happened to these missing girls. She’s slowly discovering that the adults she trusted aren’t necessarily good people.
Her view of her father completely crumbles.
She learns that he cheated on her mother with the mother of one of her best friends and begins to understand what that betrayal did to her mom. Then there’s what Heather witnessed in Jerome’s basement involving Maureen, her father, and Jerome.
It was sickening.
And I loved that Lourey didn’t just make the story about Heather solving the obvious mystery. Heather also has to decide what she’s going to do with these other horrible truths she’s learned.
At the end, she tells the federal investigator what she saw.
I LOVED that.
After everything Heather had been through, after realizing that people with authority weren’t necessarily people she could trust, she still found the courage to tell the truth. Even when that truth involved her own father.
Heather, Junie, and Beth
The ending with Heather, Junie, and Beth might be one of my favorite parts of the entire book.
Heather manages to save Junie, but ultimately Beth helps save all three of them.
And Beth didn’t have to do that.
After everything she’d endured, she could have escaped and kept going. No one would have blamed her. Instead, she made sure Heather and Junie got out too.
There was something so satisfying about these three girls being the ones who ultimately helped save one another.
Heather also finally gets the answers she’s been searching for and learns the truth about Ed, Ricky, and Ant. After spending so much of the book wondering who was involved, who knew what, who could be trusted, and how all these pieces fit together, finally seeing it come together was incredibly satisfying.
But the ending wasn’t satisfying simply because the mystery was solved.
Heather had changed.
The girl at the end of this book knows things the Heather at the beginning couldn’t have imagined. Her entire understanding of her family, her community, and the adults around her has been shattered.
And yet she’s stronger because she finally sees the truth.
Jess Lourey’s Writing
One of my absolute favorite things about The Quarry Girls was Jess Lourey’s writing.
I wish I could pull one description out and say, “THIS. This is exactly what I’m talking about.” But it wasn’t just one passage. It was the way she wrote the entire book.
She made me feel Pantown.
The tunnels felt dark and claustrophobic. The quarry could feel like the perfect place for teenagers to spend a summer night one minute and somewhere incredibly dangerous the next. You could almost feel the heat, the darkness, the dirt, and that constant sense that something wasn’t quite right.
And she was just as good at describing what was happening inside Heather.
Fear, confusion, embarrassment, suspicion, grief, that awful realization that someone you love isn’t who you thought they were. Lourey didn’t just tell me Heather was experiencing those things. She wrote them in a way that made me feel them right along with her.
That’s a huge part of why I couldn’t put this book down.
Pantown wasn’t simply the setting. It felt like part of the story.
Would I Recommend The Quarry Girls?
One thousand percent, YES.
I loved Unspeakable Things, but The Quarry Girls was even better for me.
It was dark. It was disturbing. It was heartbreaking in places. There were so many people to suspect and so many things happening underneath the surface that I constantly wanted to know more.
And I devoured it.
My reading list is ridiculously long, so rereading books isn’t something I do very often. But I almost wish it weren’t, because I already want to read this one again.
That’s how much I loved it.
And PLEASE make this into a movie.
The quarry. The tunnels. Pantown in the 1970s. Beth’s terrifying imprisonment. Heather slowly realizing that the people and places she’s known her entire life aren’t what she thought they were.
I would love to see Jess Lourey’s descriptions brought to life on screen.
For now, though, The Quarry Girls has officially moved to the top of my list.
It’s going to take a really, really good book to knock it off.