...a powerful work that shows how many different people and organizations failed these women ... While the book is difficult to read at times owing to the details of sexual violence, it may be the most important sports title of the year. Pesta's in-depth reporting reveals the entire scope of Nassar's history, and the many who enabled his behavior. Highly recommended.

The reader will be horrified at not only the actions of Nassar, but also the verbally and physically abusive conduct of coach John Geddert, who, in effect, drove the girls into Nassar’s web, but also by a conspiracy of silence by so-called 'responsible adults' ... While many of the gymnasts gave statements at Nassar’s criminal sentencing, for some, The Girls offers them a first opportunity to speak. By doing so, they break out of the role of victim and transform themselves into the role of heroic survivors ... The Girls is their story of courage and Larry Nassar is now nothing more than a footnote.

This is a story of great evil eventually brought to justice ... Pesta’s empathy for these girls and women is palpable, and powerful. There are times when the book threatens to veer toward cliché (the 'triumph of the human spirit' is invoked), and I wish Pesta had spent more time probing Nassar’s own story (to explain how the monster was made) ... Where she’s able to go beyond newspaper accounts is in giving voice to the survivors’ stories. At its best, the book has the effect of a chorus of righteous anger, and some of the survivors’ words ring with a beautiful fury.

Parts of the book were incredibly difficult to read. The truth is, I had to skip a few paragraphs here and there. Abigail Pesta has quite rightly told each of the gymnasts stories wholely and truthfully, resulting in some haunting stories ... From a journalistic point of view, I cannot imagine what it must have been like for Abigail to hear these horror stories from these brave women and then to deal with the pressure of retelling their stories in this way. I congratulate Abigail whole heartedly for her work in this ... I cannot use the word brave enough in this review ... The work that Abigail Pesta has done with this book is incredible, to tell the stories of these women and girls exactly the way it needs to be told. Not to shy away from detail, not to shy away from the impact of what they went through ... I honestly think that this book is one that every single person who works in sport should read. Why? Because every administrator, development officer, admin staff, CEO and coach needs to know what can happen if heads are turned the other way. They need to know exactly the devastation, the pain and the destruction that can be caused by the simple act of ignoring. Some need to be reminded that if it wasn’t for the athletes, the human beings that perform their sport, they would not have their jobs ... Congratulations to Abigail Pesta on this incredible book, but more importantly, to the hundreds of women who stood up to evil and brought it down ... If you work in sport, please read this book.

The biggest revelation by far is the never-before told story of Sara Teristi, a former gymnast who met Nassar in 1988 and, Pesta writes, 'may have been his very first target' ... Teristi’s is a vital entry in the public files on Nassar. It is also among the few aspects of Pesta’s book that lives up to the 'untold story' promise of its title. Much of what Pesta includes here has been covered extensively elsewhere. Pesta is a gentle, empathetic narrator, taking care to show readers the emotional toll of reliving trauma ... But The Girls doesn’t have...lived-in expertise ... Pesta’s writing lacks...lyrical ache and intensity ... Although Pesta’s reporting and analysis give a thorough, damning portrait of the culture that aided and abetted Nassar, she rarely steps back to put the story in a broader context ... In some ways, her writing mirrors the cloistered space in which these women were groomed and abused, where there is no world beyond the walls of the gym.

Pesta’s book is also peppered with personal anecdotes about her own short-lived gymnastics career, but the core of the story, and the interviews that anchor it, do apt justice to the saga of Nassar ... Nassar’s survivors were courageous to tell their stories, to Pesta and on the stand. The Girls honors that bravery. Pesta’s book makes clear the tragedy of a culture in which the bodies of women and girls are commodified and abused, and the losses they suffer personally and professionally in rape culture. In the #MeToo era, The Girls is a powerful addition to the nationwide conversations and reckonings happening around sexual abuse, harassment and violence.

The survivors and those who advocate for them are the only voices telling the story. This is partially due to the fact that numerous others in the larger investigation—people who have been subsequently fired, charged or outed as having aided Nassar—refused to comment or never responded to Pesta’s requests. Pesta also makes no effort to explain Nassar’s motivations or to locate the 'man' behind the 'monster.' It’s a choice that makes the book stronger, and as a true crime story, it makes a case for how these narratives can be told in a victim-centering way ... Pesta seeds the book with details that cut through the near unfathomable abuse that the girls lived through ... Pesta also uses her own presence as a conduit for the reader to great effect ... But Pesta’s approach isn’t without missteps; she relies heavily on concluding sections with reminders that the reader will be brought back to stories or will see what happens next in the coming pages—a move that makes the narrative more fragmented than necessary. Minor structural flaws aside, The Girls takes a headline-grabbing case and makes it human, which is the true crime genre at its best.

...as inspirational as it is disturbing ... Pesta’s compassionate in-depth reporting is startling in its entirety and candor and should be read by coaches, counselors, therapists, law enforcement officers, sports writers, parents of young athletes and athletes, university officials and especially university presidents