~Gina Augustini Best

Lion Girl by Gina Augustini Best hits like a held breath you didn’t realize you were carrying – tight, heavy, and impossible to ignore. This isn’t a story that eases you in; it grips you by the collar and plants you firmly inside Emma’s mind, where grief stalks every corner and silence roars louder than any scream.

Fifteen-year-old Emma is trying to survive the fallout of a family tragedy that shattered her world. What used to be a home now feels like an echo chamber – her father is physically present but emotionally unreachable, her mother has drifted into addiction and instability, and the past refuses to stay buried. Emma clings to control the only way she knows how: running, pushing, suppressing. But no matter how fast she moves, she can’t outrun the thought that if it weren’t for her, Casey might still be alive. That guilt threads through everything – her panic attacks, her isolation at school, her inability to breathe freely in her own life. Yet, as the story unfolds, a quiet network of support begins to form around her, nudging her toward something she doesn’t quite trust yet: healing.

Emma is the heartbeat of this novel, and Best writes her with striking precision. She’s messy, relentless, and painfully real. You don’t just read her – you feel her. The anxiety isn’t exaggerated or softened; it’s sharp, intrusive, and constant. Her coping mechanisms feel raw and honest, never polished for comfort. The weight she carries is heavy for anyone, let alone a teenager, but it never feels forced. It’s built through her actions, her reactions, the way she moves through the world. That lived-in authenticity is where this book shines.

Her father adds another layer of complexity – brilliant but emotionally absent, avoiding pain in a way that feels deeply human rather than villainous. That quiet distance lands harder than outright conflict ever could. And her mother, though largely absent, becomes a presence in her absence – a lingering shadow that shapes Emma just as much as anyone physically in the room.

This isn’t a fast-paced, twist-driven read, and it doesn’t try to be. The story leans into emotional pacing, allowing tension to build slowly and deliberately. The atmosphere feels almost cinematic – ordinary spaces turned suffocating, silence that cuts deeper than noise, grief that lingers like a storm that never fully passes. There’s a constant pressure under the surface, tied to the unspoken truth no one wants to face. And when that silence finally swells, it hits with full force.

Lion Girl is a quiet storm – steady, immersive, and deeply affecting. It doesn’t rely on shock value or dramatic reveals. Instead, it focuses on something far more lasting: what it means to carry pain alone, and what it takes to finally set some of it down. Emma’s story isn’t just about loss – it’s about what happens when no one helps you hold it, and what it looks like when someone finally does. This one lingers.

Thank you to author Gina Augustini Best and Lone Star Literary Life for the opportunity to Alpha/Beta/ARC for Lion Girl. As always, all opinions and reviews are of my own volition, The Tx Lit Chic. I have not been promised any compensation, current or future, by the author or publisher for a fair and honest review of Lion Girl.