At the recommendation of Dana Perino, Fox News anchor and cohost and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, I purchased GIRLS LIKE US by Cristina Alger. It wasn't bad, but I wish I had borrowed it from the library, instead. Perino is a smart beauty with an impressive resume, but our tastes in writing style don't quite agree.

Nell, an FBI agent with an office in Washington, DC, comes home to Long Island for her father's funeral. He was a police detective who died in a motorcycle accident. But Nell becomes suspicious about her father's death and of all the people he worked with. So she doesn't return to Washington as soon as she had planned.

I was put off by all sorts of little details such as a sentence I could have sworn I read elsewhere and Nell's statement that prostitutes don't choose that profession. But it isn't a bad book, just not good enough to make me seek Alger's other books.

Easy, fast-paced read. Entertaining but kind of predictable. A lot of the premise screamed Jeffery Epstein to me so it lost some points for creativity. If you’re looking for a crime thriller to read on the beach, this is an easy pick.