From the very opening of Her Name Was Rose, Claire Allen immediately catapults her readers into the action when the narrator, Emily, narrowly escapes becoming a victim of a hit and run accident. She suspects that this was no accident, and that she was supposed to be the intended target- not the young mother whose life Emily witnesses being torn out right before her eyes. It is also immediately apparent that she is woman who has been destabilized and damaged by some past trauma. Stricken with guilt, Emily tries to discover as much as she can about Rose, the woman who she feels took her place. She scours social media for details about Rose and her family, even going so far as to attend her funeral. What she sees leads her to covet the life led by the deceased, and she attempts to learn more by applying to replace Rose at her workplace. Emily insinuates herself there by acting as a supportive friend to the grieving people she meets, and eventually as a shoulder to cry on for Rose’s famous husband. As the novel progresses, Allen slowly unfolds Emily’s history, creating questions about her main character’s reliability and state of mind. Emily, desperate for a sense of identity and connection, makes increasingly bad choices that soon place her in the crosshairs of a killer. The reader has no recourse but to rely on Emily’s point-of-view, despite sensing that she might be deluded and have a skewed perspective about what is happening around her. This book was a great quick read, fast-paced with some nice twists, and would appeal to mystery fans of Girl on a Train (Paula Hawkins) or Big Little Lies (Liane Moriarty).