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Verdict: A fast, smart YA hostage thriller with a genuinely memorable bisexual con-artist heroine and a sweet sapphic relationship at its centre, undercut by a heist that some readers find too implausible and a flashback structure that drains the tension for others.
Best for: Readers who want a competent, damaged heroine running circles around the adults, who read thrillers for character rather than realism, and who are comfortable with a book that takes childhood abuse seriously and on the page.
Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — glimpses and kisses)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.02 Goodreads average across more than 55,000 ratings, with a steady minority who never bought the heist)
Tropes: Con artist heroine, bank heist, hostage situation, dual timeline, found family, established sapphic couple, platonic ex, trauma survivor, competent heroine, sisters.
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe is the first of two Nora O’Malley books, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers in January 2021 — a young adult thriller that sits closer to lesbian romantic suspense than to romance, in which a seventeen-year-old who spent her childhood helping her con-artist mother play other girls walks into a small-town bank with her girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend just as two armed men decide to rob it.
It has a 4.02 average across roughly 56,000 Goodreads ratings, starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and BookPage, a Kirkus best-of-the-year nod, and a Netflix film with Millie Bobby Brown attached that has since fallen apart. The trade reviews are close to unanimous; the readers split on one question — whether you believe it. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.
What Is The Girls I’ve Been About?
The Girls I’ve Been is a YA thriller first, a trauma novel a close second and a love story a distant third. Goodreads readers shelve it under Young Adult, Thriller, Mystery and LGBT, and the publisher pitches it at fourteen and up. The present-day action covers a few hours inside a bank, while the emotional weight sits in the years Nora spent as her mother’s apprentice, told in interleaved flashbacks.
Nora O’Malley is defined by what she has had to stop being. She has not played one of her mother’s girls for five years; she lives with her older half-sister, Lee, goes to therapy and tries to be a normal high school senior. What she lacks is anyone who knows all of her. Iris, her girlfriend, sees the girl in front of her. Wes, her ex and her closest friend, knows more. The robbers assume they have taken a bank full of frightened civilians. The first-person narration puts you inside Nora’s calculation the whole time, which is what makes her the book’s engine.
What Makes This Queer YA Heist Thriller Work
- Nora herself: The most consistent praise in the reviews goes to the heroine — morally grey, frighteningly competent and plainly hurt — one reader calls her among the best characters they have read.
- The dual timeline: Readers who love it say the flashbacks are paced like reveals, with each backstory chapter adding a piece of who Nora is rather than simply pausing the siege.
- Bisexual representation without apology: Kirkus describes Nora as openly and confidently bisexual, and readers praise that her identity is never a plot problem to be solved.
- No love triangle: Wes is an ex who stays a friend, and readers repeatedly single out how cleanly the book refuses to set him against Iris — a rare choice in YA that earns it real goodwill.
- Trauma handled with care: Readers and trade reviewers alike credit Sharpe for treating abuse and its aftermath seriously, with therapy shown as help rather than plot furniture, which is why it earns its place on a lesbian mystery and thriller shelf.
Book Synopsis
Nora O’Malley was raised to be whoever the job required. Her mother made a living conning dangerous men, and Nora was the prop that made every story believable — a new name, a new backstory, a new girl for each mark. Five years ago that life ended. Now she is seventeen, living with her half-sister, keeping her head down and trying to believe that the person she has become is a real one.
On an ordinary morning she heads to the local bank with Iris, the girlfriend she is still learning how to let in, and Wes, the ex-boyfriend who has remained her fiercest friend. Instead two armed men lock the doors, and the three of them become hostages alongside a handful of strangers.
Nora can see how this goes wrong, and how to steer it — but every trick she has comes from the girls she used to be, and using them means letting the people she loves watch her become someone they have never met. As the hours tick past inside the bank, the story keeps cutting back to the years she spent learning those tricks and to the last con, the one that did not end the way her mother planned. Whether she can get everyone out without reopening all of it is the question the rest of the book answers.
My Review
Nora is the reason to read this, and I want to lead with that because the book lives or dies on whether you buy her. Sharpe gives her a voice that is dry, precise and constantly working an angle, and the pleasure of the present-day chapters is watching a teenager read a room full of armed adults faster than they can read her.
The second strength is the relationships around her. Iris is not decoration — she has her own history and a chronic illness in endometriosis that the book takes seriously — and Wes is one of the more unusual boys in queer YA, an ex whose loyalty to Nora is never a threat to her girlfriend. Lee, the half-sister who took Nora in, gives the book its quietest emotional weight. It is a found-family story disguised as a hostage thriller.
Where it struggles is plausibility, and this is not one cranky reader but the most repeated criticism in the negative reviews. A steady minority say Nora’s competence tips into superhero territory — a seventeen-year-old outthinking everyone in the building on every beat — so the danger never quite feels real. Around that sits the structural complaint: the flashbacks that fans call perfectly paced are, for others, exactly what kills the suspense, because the siege stops every time it builds. Several reviewers also say the backstory is told rather than dramatised, and a smaller group found the final section abrupt.
One expectation to reset: the cover and the heist hook suggest a caper, and this is a much heavier book than that. The abuse Nora survived is central, it includes the grooming and abuse of children, and it is described plainly. If “YA heist” is what drew you, calibrate; if “YA” is what made you assume it would be light, know what you are walking into.
My honest note: A four-and-a-half-star heroine in a three-and-a-half-star heist, held together by the people around her. If you need a thriller to be plausible, this will lose you in the first hour. If you read thrillers for the person at the centre, Nora is worth the ride.
| Element | In The Girls I’ve Been |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Nora O’Malley & Iris — an established couple, with Nora’s ex Wes as a strictly platonic best friend |
| Core tropes | Con artist heroine, bank heist, hostage situation, dual timeline, found family, competent heroine |
| Setting | A small-town bank over a few hours, intercut with Nora’s childhood on the con with her mother |
| Heat level | 1/5 — glimpses and kisses |
| Series | Nora O’Malley book 1 of 2 — the heist resolves; sequel The Girl in Question (2024) |
| Content notes | Child abuse including sexual abuse and grooming, domestic violence, psychological abuse, gun violence and hostage-taking, PTSD, endometriosis, car accident |
How Dark and Spicy Is The Girls I’ve Been?
A 1/5 for heat. Unusually for a YA thriller, romance.io does index it, and it places the book in its lowest band, “glimpses and kisses,” tagging it for abuse, past child abuse and mental trauma. That matches the reader reviews: Nora and Iris are affectionate and clearly together, but nobody reports anything beyond kissing, and at least one reader notes the book gives more room to Nora and Wes’s friendship than to the romance.
Darkness is the real question. The abuse in Nora’s past is the spine of the book, and readers repeatedly flag child sexual abuse, grooming and domestic violence among the content warnings, alongside the on-page threat of the hostage situation. No reviewer I found describes it as gratuitous, and many praise its restraint. If you want the same low heat with a lighter crime plot, Fortune Favors the Dead and Dead Dead Girls both sit at 1/5.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a heroine who is smarter than everyone in the room, you like thrillers told in split timelines, you want sapphic and bisexual representation that is simply part of the story, and you value found family and friendship as much as romance.
You may want to skip it if: implausible competence breaks a thriller for you, flashbacks that interrupt the action frustrate you, you came for a romance and want it on the page, or child abuse is a subject you need to avoid.
In short: a heroine readers never forget, in a heist that asks you to suspend a good deal of disbelief.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
This is not a quiet book. It arrived with a Netflix announcement already attached — Millie Bobby Brown was set in 2020 to star in and produce an adaptation with Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films. That film no longer exists: Netflix Junkie reported in April 2025 that Sharpe said the project was no longer in development and the rights had returned to her after the strike-era delays. What sustains the book now is its reputation. It picked up starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and BookPage, a place on Kirkus’s best-of-year list and ALA Rainbow Book List selection, and it keeps accumulating ratings — roughly 56,000 on Goodreads at 4.02, and 4.4 across about 2,800 on Amazon with 1% at two stars or below. I found no meaningful Reddit footprint in search. The audiobook is narrated by Sharpe herself for Listening Library, running just under ten hours, and listeners mostly enjoy the author voicing her own heroine; at least one found the vocal fry grating early on but says it came to fit Nora.
Prefer audio? Listen to The Girls I’ve Been on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Nora first and most consistently — “competent,” “morally grey” and “complex” are the recurring words, and she is the character people recommend the book for. Then the pacing, which fans describe as fast and twisty, with the dual timeline praised for feeding reveals at the right moments. The Wes and Iris dynamic gets its own affection, specifically for the absence of a love triangle. The bisexual and endometriosis representation both get named. Trade reviewers agree: Kirkus calls it “a captivating, explosive, and satisfyingly queer thriller,” and Publishers Weekly notes that Sharpe gives as much attention to the systems that excuse abuse as to the action.
What readers argue about and complain about: Plausibility, above everything. The recurring low-star complaint is that Nora is simply too capable and the robbers too incompetent for the stakes to feel real; one reviewer compares her to a teenage James Bond. The structure is the second theme — the constant cutting away means the siege never builds, and one one-star reviewer asks, “What kind of heist happens without a single shred of tension or thrill?” Third: telling rather than showing, with the cons described in summary instead of played out. Beyond that, a smaller cluster found the ending abrupt, and a handful argue that every major character carrying an abuse history starts to feel engineered. The notable split is between the trade reviews, which praise it as tightly plotted and nail-biting, and the readers who found it neither — the disagreement is about the exact quality the professionals liked best.
The series question everyone should ask first: book one stands on its own. The bank situation resolves, Nora’s arc lands, and although one reader felt it left the door open for a sequel it did not need, nobody describes a cliffhanger. The sequel, The Girl in Question, followed in May 2024 from a different publisher and follows Nora after graduation; it sits at 4.29 across about 4,700 Goodreads ratings — higher than book one — and readers treat it as the end of the story. If you finish book one wanting more of Nora and Iris, it is there and it is finished.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Girls I’ve Been a romance novel?
No. It is a young adult thriller with an established sapphic relationship at its centre. Nora and Iris are already together when the book opens, and the hostage plot and Nora’s past drive the story rather than the romance.
How spicy is The Girls I’ve Been?
A 1/5. romance.io places it in its lowest band, “glimpses and kisses,” and readers report nothing beyond kissing. It is published for readers fourteen and up.
Does The Girls I’ve Been end on a cliffhanger?
No. The bank situation is resolved and Nora’s arc closes within the book. A sequel exists, but you are not left hanging.
Is there a sequel to The Girls I’ve Been?
Yes. The Girl in Question was published in May 2024 and follows Nora after high school. It holds a 4.29 Goodreads average, higher than book one, and readers treat it as the final book.
Is The Girls I’ve Been being made into a Netflix movie?
Not anymore. Netflix announced a film starring Millie Bobby Brown in 2020, but in 2025 Tess Sharpe said the project was no longer in development and the rights had returned to her.
Is there an audiobook of The Girls I’ve Been?
Yes. Tess Sharpe narrates it herself for Listening Library, and it runs just under ten hours. It is also available on Libro.fm.
If You Loved The Girls I’ve Been, Read These Next
Readers who came for a sharp-tongued heroine with a colourful past should go next to Fortune Favors the Dead, which runs a former circus performer’s wisecracking narration through a 1940s locked-room case at the same closed-door heat. If it was the survivor-turned-investigator at the centre that held you, Dead Dead Girls gives you a kidnapping survivor hunting a killer in 1926 Harlem. And for the identity-shifting operative working a criminal outfit from the inside, The Best Bad Things does it in the 1880s Pacific Northwest — for adults only, at a much higher heat.
For more in this register, browse our full lesbian mystery and thriller books guide or the complete Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
The Girls I’ve Been is a book whose heroine outruns its heist. Nora is one of the most vivid leads in queer YA, the friendship and found family around her are drawn with real tenderness, and the book handles abuse with a seriousness that earned it a shelf of starred reviews. It also asks you to believe a great deal, interrupts its own tension at every turn, and tells much of its backstory rather than dramatising it. Whether that trade is worth it depends on what you read thrillers for — for a character you will remember and a sapphic relationship with no triangle in sight, it is. Check The Girls I’ve Been on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, The Girls I’ve Been ranks as a heavyweight bisexual YA thriller — carried by a heroine readers adore and a no-triangle found family, held back by an implausible heist and a stop-start structure, and best approached for Nora rather than for the robbery.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 4.02 average across about 56,000 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Starred by Kirkus, Booklist and BookPage
- ✓ 4.4 on Amazon across 2,764 ratings
- ✓ Implausibility is the loudest complaint
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Nora and Iris feel genuinely tender
- ✓ No love triangle, widely praised
- ✓ Iris has her own history
- ✓ Friendship with Wes gets more page time
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.3/5
- ✓ Nora is the most-praised element
- ✓ Wes a rare platonic ex
- ✓ Lee gives the family real weight
- ✓ Some say trauma replaces personality
Writing ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Dry, witty first-person voice
- ✓ Kirkus praises the nonlinear layering
- ✓ Fast, easy to read
- ✓ Backstory told more than shown
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.2/5
- ✓ Abuse treated seriously, not as shock
- ✓ Found family lands hard
- ✓ Therapy shown as real help
- ✓ Stop-start structure dulls the danger
Heat Level ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ romance.io’s lowest band, glimpses and kisses
- ✓ Nothing beyond kissing reported
- ✓ Published for ages fourteen and up
- ✓ Dark themes despite the low heat
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Heist fully resolved
- ✓ No cliffhanger
- ✓ Sequel completes Nora’s story
- ✓ Several readers call it abrupt
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Sequel rated higher at 4.29
- ✓ Author-narrated audio, just under ten hours
- ✓ Nora’s voice is the lasting draw
- ✓ Twists lose force once known
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