Reviews with content warning for Death - The Dead Girls Club

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters

5 reviews

minimicropup's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

🇺🇸 Set in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay area, USA

POV: The narrative intertwines the past and present of a child counselor haunted by the disappearance of her best friend in the 1990s.

Mood Reading Match Up:

-Secretive dark past with unraveling and mysterious occurrences

-Coming of age friendship with tragic “what would you do”, “how far would you go” tropes

-Themes of peer pressure, childhood trauma, fate, ideology, sacrifice, friendship, neglect, loyalty, madness, and personal development.

—

🐺 Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags 🐕

✏️ Writing: The narrative style was immersive and sensory, effectively transitioning between the two timelines. The use of first-person present tense for the adult perspective and past tense for childhood memories created distinct atmospheres for each period, adding depth to the story over time.

🫥 Characters: For me the protagonist, Heather, came across as frustratingly impulsive and self-sabotaging as an adult, but her character was more sympathetic and relatable in her tween years. I guess the contrast portrayed the lasting impact of childhood trauma. Her best friend, Becca, was also a character with depth who I sometimes disliked and other times felt for.

🗺️ Worldbuilding: The descriptions were perfect if you love to visualize settings, offering just enough detail without being overwhelming. The atmospheric buildup was gradual, kind of like a scene taking shape over time.

🔥 Fuel: Central to the novel was the mystery surrounding Heather and her best friend, Becca. There is also suspense building from exploring the complexities of their relationship and the impact of external influences. We necessarily need the characters to hold back from the reader for this story to take shape, but I thought it was done well without resorting to cheap narrative tricks. There is also considerable suspense around who to trust in the present day.

🐢🐇 Pacing: The pacing balanced well between reflection and progression. However, Heather’s development felt rushed towards the end, with a sudden shift in her understanding of herself and her past that didn’t quite align with her earlier characterization.

🎬 Scenes: The portrayal of the girls’ tween years was particularly vivid, capturing the essence of childhood innocence, peer pressure, and the yearning for acceptance. I thought the narrative did a good job with showing the complexities in navigating the emotional landscape of young friendships and their darker undertones. I felt the present-day narrative lagging sometimes when our main character was going off the rails, risking her career and relationships just to get a ‘sense’ of something, but it was still interesting.

🤷‍♀️ Nerdy Nit-picking: Heather’s profession in child psychology contrasted sharply with her apparent inability to apply her knowledge to her own life and somehow a lack of mandatory therapy for herself, a point that remained unaddressed until the very end.

🤔 Random Thoughts: Overall I thought this story was a haunting look into the shadows of the past, revealing how secrets and childhood experiences shape our present. It’s likely to be a compelling read for those who appreciate psychological depth and the blurred lines between memory and reality.

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Content Heads-Up: Peer pressure, ostracizing. Domestic violence (parent on child). Parental abandonment and neglect. Substance abuse, alcoholism, self-medicating. Murder. Manipulation. Stalking. Fire (building). Blood.

Rep: Includes White, mixed race (Asian American), and racially ambiguous Americans.

Format: Library via Overdrive

“Reviews are my musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶 refined by my AI bookworm bestie ✨”

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seagullsaga's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

aseel_reads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.25

This was super suspenseful and captivating. I thought part of the part twist was a little weak but by the end, I thought it was done mostly well

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siobhanward's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

2.0

I don't know what happened to this one. The premise was strong but the execution just wasn't great. Adult Heather apparently never developed any common sense and every decision she makes is terrible. I'm shocked she had anyone still around her by the end of the book. The past plot was decent though, and I liked the story behind The Red Lady, so the book was clinging onto that third star until the end where absolutely everything unraveled. This just was not a good read for me, unfortunately.

Content Warnings

rachelunabridged's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.25

I found this to be a really disappointing read. I was on-board at the beginning and thought it had a great set-up. Sadly, the further I read, the worse it got.

For one thing, it was just physically painful for me to keep watching the main character make increasingly stupid decisions. Also, I just found her choices and actions to be absolutely wild for someone who's supposed to be a psychologist. (Not saying that psychologists inherently make correct decisions, just the nature of her actions was what I thought was kind of hard to swallow.) Toward the end of the book, I was ready for her to be caught in her manipulations and maybe arrested or something because, yikes, did she do some morally reprehensible things throughout this book!

Main character aside, this book also hit one of my big plot pet peeves: the author lying to the reader.

The "twist" of the book is that Becca's secret mother who no one knew about was actually the one who was harassing Heather. We're told throughout the book that Lauren is Becca's mother, with no indication otherwise and no breadcrumbs to be able to figure it out for ourselves. So not only does the author try to pull a "gotcha!" by straight up lying to the reader, the mysterious antagonist of the book is also someone that you'll never get the opportunity to figure out because you don't know she even exists. In a book with such a heavy mystery plot, this was just so frustrating to me.

Ultimately, I just felt cheated by this book. I like to go into books as blind as possible, but if I'd known how this book ended, I wouldn't have finished it, to be completely honest.

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