Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight

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You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron

134 reviews

sarah_shelf's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

I think I need to acquaint myself more with the slasher genre. I’ve seen the last half of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and that’s it. So I went into this novel with expectations carried over from the other horror books I’ve read, but I don’t think they’re generally present in a slasher.

Overall, this was a short fun read. I didn’t fall in love with this book but I didn’t hate it either. It feels like there’s a lot of exposition. We spend a lot of time on one level of the “mystery” when weird stuff is happening, but everyone ignores or rationalizes it because it’s all supposed to be a game. Then when we hit the action it just takes off and all happens within the last third. So the pacing just felt kind of weird.

I honestly could not take the cult seriously. My only thoughts were: “so they’re a rip-off of the Court of Owls. Where’s the Batman character?” Obviously this is about the Final Girl so no one’s gonna show up to randomly save the day, but it weakened the power of the Society so I found their gimmick more humorous. Also, re the no savior’s gonna show, it’s no surprise Mr. Lamont was in on it.

The characters, backstory, and mystery weren’t super developed, but I think that’s due to length and again the slasher genre. To that end, I can’t decide if I like the final slasher or not.

When you consider the circumstances, Kyle makes sense. He called his grandma which prompted Tasha’s group to go investigate Ms Keane, so they could be snatched from the woods. He didn’t go into the house and tried to warn them out, but only after they were already inside. He stayed behind with Javier and Tasha and he was the one who told Charity and Bezi that they were taken to the hospital. He went mysteriously silent on the comms when the girls ran into the Head Owl. I also should’ve made the connection between him playing the role of the Mirror Lake serial killer, and Charity’s comments that he’s too nice for anyone to believe him dangerous outside of the mask. However, his lackadaisical attempts to “warn them away” just made the character seem very underdeveloped. He couldn’t decide if he was loyal to his friends or to his family/beliefs, but not in a way that causes internal conflict. Rather, in a way that makes the character very weak. If he wanted to get away so badly, why didn’t he just tell his friends & run away? We were given no reason to suggest he was trapped or would be tracked down. There were no adults at the camp and he knows where all the cameras are. He could’ve very easily made a different choice, but he stuck to the ritual. Yet he doesn’t seem to actually want the power that much beyond escaping. It doesn’t make sense.

I did really like the epilogue. The final chapter leaves you in a state of “it can’t end that way!” So Bayron gives you a more satisfying ending. It is in some ways a definitive ending and an open-ended one.

Was it truly Charity who climbed out of the lake? Do our final girls get their happy ending? Or is there another story, where Charity isn’t truly human or Charity anymore. Would Bezi care? If so, can they be happy together, or does Bezi have to handle whatever is wearing her lover’s face? I presume it’s truly Charity, but it’s interesting to think about other possibilities. Though, as my friend said during my rant about this book, why didn’t Bezi wish to bring all of them back to life?

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readingqueerly's review

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book was un-fucking-hinged. First of all because I was terrified for a good part of it. I'm a scaredy cat through and through and I don't know why I thought I could stand reading horror.
But also, some of the plot kinda softened that blow because of how unhinged it was in an almost funny way? Idk some elements of the plot just broke the tension of the story and broke me out of the reading zone a little too. Personally, I didn't mind too much, like I said, I'm a scaredy cat. I was speedreeding this second half like crazy so I wouldn't get caught up too much anyways. A bitch gets paranoid if they do, I swear.
But some of it was not just me trying to gain some distance from this book.
I will say there were a lot of twists at the end all at once that really brought the whole tjing together imo. That was really well done.
All in all not bad at all, a good horror, but sometimes leaning a bit too much on suspension of disbelief.

Content Warnings

lizacorn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This was a great take on the slasher genre. Really enjoyed the Easter eggs and premise. Could have spent more time at the top of the book but the focus was on the action which tbh made sense

Content Warnings

judassilver's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Content Warnings

nicole_zx's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

I was really excited to get into this book. I loved Cinderella is Dead, and know the author is good at what she does. Even though they’re different genres I had full faith in her abilities. However, I think this is one of the few books that would be better suited to a visual medium like a movie, show, or graphic novel.

I think it had a relatively decent start and I was really excited to see a group of horror savvy teens navigate a horror story. There were already some hints of it at the start with the way Charity would think about not going into potentially sketchy places to avoid falling into horror movie tropes. One of her best friends is a huge horror movie nerd and constantly talks about not recreating horror movie scenarios in real life. I thought it had some funny moments and I found (most) of the characters enjoyable and likeable.

I was, however, let down a bit by the pacing. I thought the book was a bit slow at the beginning and it wasn’t until much later in the book things started to pick up and we got to proper tension and action. There was cop-out in the “spooky thing hunting the characters down” department which I wasn’t sure how I felt about. Some things felt over established like the lack of cell service, but there were some well built to moments like the stuff with the owls. It just didn’t make up for the dragged out beginning and the rushed ending. Having the proper horror and action not really kick in until maybe the last 60% just didn’t benefit the story. I didn’t expect the entire book to be action and avoiding the monster, but I expected more to happen. The first 60% was mostly establishing the characters and setting the scene for why they were alone at the camp for the final night. It didn’t feel like there was a proper build of dread and tension, or any proper hinting at what was happening.

The characters too just fell flat in some places. While I liked most of them, it doesn’t benefit the story to have a main character repeatedly avoiding the action. Also if the characters are established as being genre savvy and clever about avoiding the pitfalls of horror tropes (especially when that’s one character’s whole thing) I expect that to follow through into the rest of the story. I expect them to be genre savvy and not fall into pitfalls of horror like splitting the group, going into dark shadowy places, ect. I think a story about a group of people that are very aware of horror tropes and try to avoid them, but get got anyways would be interesting! But when you setup the characters to be that way and then don’t deliver it’s disappointing. This could also be a consequence of me not being very in-touch with modern trends or teenagers (I’m an old lady at heart) the dialogue felt like it was written by an adult trying to sound like a teen and just didn’t deliver.

Finally, the ending. I don’t mind a vague ending, I think they can be fun and done well! That’s not the issue. The issue is the four back to back plot twist with only half of them even decently built to. The first one felt completely out of left field, the second made sense and I had predicted it, the third was equally out of no where and felt thrown in, and the last I had begun to suspect a little bit and made sense when revealed. It just completely soured the book for me and took what would have been a 3 star book down to 2 stars.

I think this book has a lot of potential and could be really good! Just not as a book. If it were a movie and the pacing touched up slightly I think I would eat it up.

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queer_bookwyrm's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

4 ⭐ CW: Violence, blood, gore, violent death, human sacrifice, dead animals, murder, gun violence, cursing

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron is a YA horror, perfect for fans of slasher horror films. Let me be clear, I'm not the biggest horror fan. I'm a bit of a wimp and don't care for the gorey stuff, but I did enjoy this short read with a black lesbian MC and final girl.

We follow Charity, the final girl of Camp Mirror Lake's full contact terror simulation. Charity's summer job is to be the final girl and oversee the simulation of scaring the pants off the guests that pay to be on the site the movie was filmed at. When a couple of staff go missing (assumed to have just quit), Charity invites her girlfriend, Bezi and their friend Paige to come help with staffing the simulation. Soon Charity and her friends find out something fucky is up with Camp Mirror Lake when some lady comes in swinging a gun around. Things get really weird and really gorey until we get to the end where my response, out loud, was "well shit ".

This was a great scary book for spooky season! It has all the vibes. It's kind of meta in the way that it's about a terror simulation based on a movie similar to Friday the 13th, but then actual murder starts to happen, but the characters don't have genre blindness. They know about the horror movie rules. I do love how Bayron has subverted the final girl trope, and given it to a queer girl of color.

As previously stated, I'm not a fan of gore, so I could have gone without that in here, but the suspense did keep me on my toes, and made me blow through this in two days. I was surprised that all the twists were not predictable. The end left me feeling like something else is about to happen, just like a good horror movie makes you feel like it's not quite yet.

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klpage's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This isn’t my usual genre but I really enjoyed this. This was dark, perfect for this season.

It had a dark and tense atmosphere and it genuinely felt like a horror film.

I had a couple of predictions about some characters but some twists did keep me off guard!

Highly recommend.

Content Warnings

patchy_at_best's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

enyltiak's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

As a horror fan, I truly enjoyed this book so much. I don't read a lot of slashers (yet!) but reading this felt like watching an 80s horror movie and I couldn't put it down. The twists and turns are exciting and harrowing, and I actually felt a sense of dread from the prose that I don't usually experience with this kind of story.

I will admit that the Owl Society felt a little cheesy to me and broke some of the tension, but the action managed to bring some of that back, and I really didn't expect the twist with Kyle. And, honestly, I think some of that cheesiness enhanced the 80s horror movie vibes!

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