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3.3 AVERAGE
3.3 AVERAGE
Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke never disappoint. Girls’ Night Out is beyond fantastic. The story revolves around three longtime friends who have struggled with their friendships for the previous. A trip to Mexico is planned to try to reconnect them. I absolutely loved the characters. Their different points of view made me really connect and understand all of their positions. The descriptions of Tulum are so vivid that I could clearly picture everything in my head. The twists and turns - wow. I don’t have adequate words describe the rollercoaster that this book is.
A million stars for Girls’ Night Out!
A million stars for Girls’ Night Out!
What a thrilling book! Try not to finish this one right before you go to sleep.
Readable, but unbelievable. I had to actively remind myself that these women were forty... they were written like college girls. Their communication skills were stunted, and their beef with each other was so banal. I guess you had to be there?
A portrait of messy female friendship but frankly a disappointing ending. I wish the author had taken a bigger swing with it.
These three women were the best of friends, but also the best of frenemies. They were quite competitive and didn't really think about each others situations very much. It didn't even seem like a girls trip, they weren't ready to talk things out, to try to forgive, and Ashley kept leaving them behind to go off with Marco. It was her idea to have this friendship healing trip and didn't even seem to try to hash things out with Lauren. I felt like some of the story was dragging through the middle, going over the same bad situations several times until we finally got to the end and found out what happened.
3.5 Stars
Girls' Night Out is a great summer beach read. Told in the POVs of all three girlfriends, and alternating between before and after Ashley's disappearance, it's a fast paced and suspenseful tale. I felt the reveal of Ashley's fate at the end was a bit rushed, while at the same time I found the description of the climbing temple trip a bit too descriptive for my taste. Although I didn't find it to be quite as chilling as I hoped, I still enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more from these authors.
Girls' Night Out is a great summer beach read. Told in the POVs of all three girlfriends, and alternating between before and after Ashley's disappearance, it's a fast paced and suspenseful tale. I felt the reveal of Ashley's fate at the end was a bit rushed, while at the same time I found the description of the climbing temple trip a bit too descriptive for my taste. Although I didn't find it to be quite as chilling as I hoped, I still enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more from these authors.
A great beach read Girls' Night Out takes a Mexico vacation to a darker place. We follow three friends hoping to repair their friendship on a Cancun vacation that takes a sinister turn,
This book was extremely reminiscent of The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager and having just read that and loving it, I found some fault in Girls' Night Out. The characters weren't as likable, the alternating timelines didn't work as well, and the twists were easier to predict.
Overall, I think I could have enjoyed this novel a lot more if I hadn't just come out of a Sager novel with a similar plotline and format. I would recommend this book to fans of Gillian Flynn who maybe are looking for a lighter summer read.
This book was extremely reminiscent of The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager and having just read that and loving it, I found some fault in Girls' Night Out. The characters weren't as likable, the alternating timelines didn't work as well, and the twists were easier to predict.
Overall, I think I could have enjoyed this novel a lot more if I hadn't just come out of a Sager novel with a similar plotline and format. I would recommend this book to fans of Gillian Flynn who maybe are looking for a lighter summer read.
Thanks to Netgalley, I was able to get my hands on an ARC of Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke's sophomore novel. Having enjoyed their debut, I was looking forward to reading their follow up and Girls' Night Out did not disappoint. A fast-paced thriller with a slew of interesting characters and enough suspense to keep you guessing throughout.
Ashley invites the other 2 women on a vacation in Mexico, under the guise of rekindling their friendships, but in reality, as a way to get away from her emotionally abusive husband to try and make a decision on whether or not she's going to divorce him. Little do they know that this getaway trip in Mexico will turn into a nightmare when Ashley goes missing and Natalie has no recollection of what happened that night. Can they trust the Mexican police to do their job and find their friend before it's too late?
At first, you don't feel connected to these characters, because the story jumps right to the morning after Ashley disappears when Natalie wakes up on the beach alone. But you quickly dive deep into the story and once you learn about each woman and their family situations, you feel connected to them.
Throughout the whole book, you wonder what the hell happened to Ashley? Did Marco kidnap her and traffic her? Did she want to play a joke on her friends to try and reconnect? Did she disappear to see what her friends would do since she was on the outs with both of them and wanted to have them prove how much they loved her? They do portray her as a very selfish person, so her doing something like that wouldn't be surprising. Did she want to get away from her emotionally abusive husband so badly, that she'd disappear and give up the life she knows, children and all? Is Lauren feeling so betrayed by everything Ashley has done, that Lauren has something to do with her disappearance? Is Natalie so desperate to sell their company to Revlon that she would do something to Ashley so that she would no longer need her to sell?
There was a lot of hype about the fight between Ashley and Lauren that essentially ruined their friendship. I thought it was going to be something catastrophic, but from an outsider's point of view looking in, it really wasn't. Lauren blamed Ashley for Jeff's death, but as an outsider looking in it was very obvious that Lauren was just grief-stricken and that Ashley had nothing to do with Jeff's death. Yes, Ashley pushed Lauren to leave Jeff because he was physically abusing her, and when Lauren told him she was leaving, that was when he had his heart attack, But Ashley stated at one point that Jeff's scans proved that he had a lot of blockage in his arteries so he would have had a heart attack eventually regardless if Lauren left him or not. So I was disappointed that the fight between them was hyped up as much as it was because I was pretty let down at what the fight was about.
When a body was found, the police asked Natalie and Ashley's husband Jason to identify the body, I was hoping that it wasn't Ashley, not because I wanted Ashley to be alive. Ashley being dead was pretty disappointing because all signs pointed to Marco having something to do with her death since he was the last person to have seen her and he cleaned out his apartment the same night Ashley disappeared. I was hoping for something more sinister than just the cliche "American woman gets kidnapped and murdered in Mexico."
After they identified the body and it was her, Natalie was devastated. Once she got back to the hotel, the receptionist gave her a sleeping pill which knocked her out for about 16 hours. After she woke up, the memories of what happened that night started flooding back. While she was relaying the memory of what happened to Ashley to the police, her husband Ben, and her attorney, it really sounded as if Natalie pushed her off the cliff in a fit of rage because Ashley was still adamant she would not agree to sell the company to Revlon. This really fit the more sinister circumstances of Ashley's disappearance that I was hoping for. I was becoming very satisfied thinking that Natalie pushed her over the edge of the cliff, but as Natalie was relaying what happened she told a story of Ashley accidentally backing off the edge of the cliff when Natalie and Marco got too close to her. But in the end, it's revealed that Ashley fell off the cliff intentionally. She basically just let go of everything in her life and then walked off the cliff.
I'm pretty disappointed with that ending, to be honest. The rest of the book was really good though.
These two authors are the perfect duo to write a fun beach read! They successfully did it last year with The Good Widow, a novel that I also loved. This book is told from the three points of view and with alternating timelines. Three old friends travel to Mexico and one of them goes missing. The alternating POVs and timelines let all the secrets be released slowly. This is a novel that I found myself rushing through just to know the ending. I'm also swayed to loving a book when I love the setting and Mexico doesn't disappoint. 4 big stars!
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review.
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review.