The Girl in Times Square audiobook

Paullina Simons has done it again. What a beautiful, beautiful book. --Poor poor Lily Quinn. She leads a hard life. She is in her early twenties and is poor as a church rat, she barly makes rent (to her crappy and smaller then smaller-appartment) and hasn´t even enough money for food. She is in collage, but never seems to get enough points to graduate. And her whole familly treats her as a doormat. Literally. And if that is not enough, she is now finding herself without a bed, since her cheating boyfriend took it, along with his share of rent money. So she is now poorer then poor.Thank goodness for her roommate and best friend Amy. But then she goes missing and Lily´s life turns upside down. And Lily´s troubles hasn´t even begun yet, as it turns out. And this time it is so serious that it threatens to take her life. (Just writing this gives me the chills. I was so unpreperad for this unexpected motherfucking twist...) Detective Spencer O`Malley, 45, is the one in charge of Amy´s case. And it turns out to be a hellalula lot complicated then everyone involve could ever have guessed. Since Lily was the person closest to Amy, Spencer and Lily ends up spending a lot of time together. And let me tell you. The sexual tension between them is INTENSE and I mean INTENSE. I read this book last summer, and if you would ask me what I remember the most, I´d say the sexual tension without a doubt. It was thick and electrical, and scorching hot! And the fact that Spencer is so much older then Lily made it so much HOTTER! And he is so SEXY, with a capital S. When we first met Spencer in Red Leaves (a prequel to this, sort of) my heart bleed for him (view spoiler)[because it was so heartbreakingly sad to see the girl he loved be murdered (hide spoiler)] and it was so hard to see him so devastated. His wife died in a car accident and now he has fallen in love for the third time and to watch the same thing happen again broke me in two for him...sniff sniff...I loved loved LOVED this book! Lily and Spencer´s love story is one of my favourites EVER! I the CONNECTION between them was ELECTRIFYING!!! I couldn´t put it down for one second, it was so addictive! And the cruel twist made it even more unputtable. I can´t believe that Paullina Simons did that to Lily. I am shocked! I HIGHLY recommend The Girl In Times Square to everyone who wants to read an AMAZING LOVE STORY mixed with suspense and unexpected twists. ♥

This is my first Paullina Simmons book but it certainly won't be my last. This is a roller coaster ride of a book with love, mystery, health problems and family issues and lots of surprises for the reader. Once you got started in this book, you won't want to put it down.Lily is just drifting through life. She has been in college for over 4 years but doesn't have enough credits to graduate, she has friends and parties but can't seem to find a boyfriend. She lives in a small flat that she shares with her best friend Amy - until one day Amy doesn't come home and no one knows where she has disappeared to. The main detective on the case, Spencer, has problems of his own and is less than nice to Lily. Just when things can't get any worse, Lily wins the lottery which creates a myriad of different problems for her. But no matter what is going on in her life, Amy is still missing and Lily's world continue to be full of problems.From a master storyteller comes a new heart-wrenching, magnificent and un-putdownable novel. This is the odyssey of two young women, Lily and Amy, roommates and friends on the verge of the rest of their lives.Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

My copy is actually called "Lily". I have not had the brainpower required to write a decent review over the past 8 weeks (although Cooper is starting to sleep through the night so hopefully it will return soon!) and so I am going to keep this simple. I really enjoyed this book and liked it even more when I realized a large part of the book was a mystery. Just like Simon's other books, I would not recommend to my more conservative friends. She definitely favors the F word in her writing. In The Bronze Horseman trilogy I was able to overlook this factor due to the war setting but it was harder to ignore in this one. Also, although there was no 70 page honeymoon there was some sexual content. I would probably give this 4.5 stars simply for the reason that this is the first book in a long time that I have not been able to put down. I have four or five other books I am working on right now and they all took backseatto this one. What a relief! I was starting to think there was something wrong with me since I have not been enjoying my book as much :)

This author has the ability to take me to a place no other can. The character development in her stories is amazing. I felt Lily's pain. I felt Spencer's pain (and addiction). This author is not for the light hearted. It's actually quite depressing. Fortunately, the ending was satisfying to me. She writes a fabulous mystery too. Although I rate this a 5 star, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone.

Este livro enterneceu-me e derrubou-me! Lindo e horrível, amor e ódio, doença e cura, fundamentalismo, ganância, pais e filhos, amigos e inimigos. Este livro é fantástico!

Favorite Quotes:He was seeing a social worker now, Mary. He quite liked her— they had been together a year— but couldn’t help feeling that he was really just another one of her more complicated cases. Once she fixed him she would go. Spencer couldn’t wait for that day. He just wasn’t sure: to be fixed or for her to go?He’s not a politician if he doesn’t have an affair. That’s how you recognize them, their pants are around their ankles. What are you going to do— prosecute each and every one?And watch out for the cohone buster. She’s got a pair of her own and they’re made of steel. Sergeant Vicario, remember him? The Jesse Ventura of the NYPD? The woman made him cry. Cry, I tell you.Lily struggled up from the bed. Unbelievable. Her mother ruined death for her even in fantasies. Even in fantasies, Lily’s death couldn’t be about Lily, it was all about Lily’s mother. She couldn’t even die the way she wanted to.Whoever said that money did not bring happiness obviously had none.My Review:Paullina Simons is a deft and skillful scribe who writes superlative tales – they are maddeningly paced, ingeniously crafted, vexingly enthralling, extremely frustrating, endlessly fascinating, irksomely confounding, and they tend to turn me inside out before they gut me, but like a lamb to the slaughter, I have to keep reading. What gall! Her books are unbelievably long, massive tomes of 600+ pages, yet I have to examine and digest each and every savory word as if I’m a deprived dieter attending a long-awaited feast while finding delectable morsels buried in each chapter. Her enthralling tales tend to be multi-layered, convoluted, and cleverly meandering to hide the buried treasures. The Girl In Times Square really cannot be defined by a single genre. I would say it is primarily women’s fiction as in the midst of a family drama, there is a missing girl that leads to a suspenseful twist, that leads to a mystery, that leads to a passionate love affair, that leads to more family drama, and additional suspense and another mystery. I loved and despised the unusual and despicable characters; they were odious, critically flawed, exasperating, endearing, weak, enticing, clever, childish, duplicitous, melodramatic, narcissistic, and yet, each and every one of them was extremely compelling. Ms. Simons slyly laces her stories with cunningly crafted story threads that prickle and cause a discomforting sense of apprehension, yet I cannot seem to put my Kindle down. There are other threads that find me holding my breath and several that find me wanting to give the infuriating characters a swift kick to a soft fleshy area. While she made me work for it, she skillfully spun all the frayed and deviously tangled strings into an unforgettable, wily, mercifully kind, and satisfying conclusion. Sigh. I can’t wait to see what she does with her next one.

I REALLY loved this book. There are enough plot summaries, so I won't add mine. This book has everything: murder mystery, suspense, family skeletons, great plot/character development, and a tender love story. Lily is just such a lovable character. She remains loyal to her dysfunctional/shady family--all the while battling cancer. As much as I was captivated by all the subplots, it was the love story between Spencer and Lily that had me turning pages until the wee hours of the night. It will capture your heart.Paullina Simons is my new favorite author. This novel is very different from The Bronze Horseman trilogy, but it is just as moving. One of the many things that Ms. Simons gets right again and again is the character development. She is so detail-oriented and thorough. You leave her stories really caring about these characters. I highly recommend this book, and I hopefully you will cherish it as much as I have.

This is a reread after a long number of years. I had forgotten so much of it, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of a young woman, the dysfunctional family. I had remembered the illness but little more. Again like last time I just sat reading to the end, it drew me in all over again.

I feel like I’m in a unique position going into The Girl In Times Square because this is my first book by this author! Sometimes I feel like I’m literally the only person left in the world that hasn’t read The Bronze Horseman or any of her other books because I see people talking about them so often. After finishing this book, I can absolutely see what everyone is talking about when they mention Simons’ great character development and engrossing plot lines. I did not want to put this book down for one minute.The Girl In Times Square has all sorts of fun things in it: a missing girl, a police investigation, a slow-building friends-to-romance, a super dramatic family, and a grandmother that I just adored. When I started reading, I thought Amy’s disappearance would be the prevalent plot that drove the book. But the more that I read, the more I felt like that wasn’t going to be the case. Certainly the investigation into finding Amy was important, but I was far more interested in what happened with Lily, since her life seemed to be on a bit of a roller coaster after her best friend’s disappearance.This isn’t a super-tense, super-suspenseful, thriller-y book that raises your heart rate and keeps you turning the pages because you’re terrified for character outcomes. This is actually a finely crafted character-driven story that follows Lily and her slowly-progressing relationship with Spencer, who is the lead investigator on Amy’s missing persons case. At first, these two know one another because they are linked by the missing persons case, but then they become friends. The two become closer over a period of months. The story also focuses heavily on Lily and her relationship with her large family.Lily’s life is a roller coaster of ups and downs, and she is intensely loyal to the people that she loves, even when I didn’t feel like she necessarily had to be. Throughout the story, Lily discovers so much about herself emotionally and physically, and she battles so much on her own that is totally separate from the difficulty of just knowing that her best friend is out there somewhere, missing, waiting to be found.I was not expecting to become so attached to these characters and the events in their lives – particularly Lily and Spencer. I was rooting for Lily so much. And I loved Spencer from the beginning. Neither are perfect; both have flaws. The characters’ imperfections and flaws and vulnerabilities are one of the best things about this story, I think and ultimately are why I think that I was able to connect so deeply with Spencer and why I loved both he and Lily so much.A sidenote: I also was not expecting the particular health journey that Lily would be taking throughout this story. I really don’t want to spoil anything in my own review, so I’ll avoid being direct about it here, but if you want more information I’m sure you can find it in other reviews. I’ll just say this: had I known the details in Lily’s personal story, I might have avoided this book for a time, just simply because of some personal things I’m going through at my own life and with my own family at the present time. Since I did not know — BOOM! — I was surprised in a very big way, and I found myself very emotional in several scenes that I don’t want to spoil here. But I think this connected me with both Lily and Spencer even more than I already was. I love that I was able to very personally invest with these characters and some of the decisions and conversations that they were forced to make/have, but my gosh, the road re: the health stuff just was not really easy for me. It was a very large part of this story. But I made it through! Whew.The Girl In Times Square was a great first experience with Paullina Simons’ stories. I read in this review that Spencer’s character is in another book from Simons, which makes me wildly curious to go back and do some reading for more of his story since I enjoyed his character so much in this book. I already wanted to read some of her other books, but I’m absolutely down for more fully engrossing reads like this one with such fully-formed characters. I genuinely feel like I miss them since I’ve closed this book.I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Thank you, William Morrow Books!Find this review and more like it on my blog, Into the Hall of Books!