Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The Dead Girls Club

WARNING for people like me who read reviews before finishing a book: This review has some mild spoilers, so read at your own risk! Heavy plot spoilers are tagged appropriately. :)

Overall impression: For a thriller, this was quite boring. I only finished because I wanted to understand the Then chapters. The characters, aside from Becca and Ryan, were mostly forgettable. The ‘supernatural’ element alluded to in the synopsis is delivered upon only in the vaguest of ways, and because Heather barely believes it herself, the reader has no incentive to, either.

Some other gripes:

This book is full of stilted dialogue that didn’t feel real or impactful.

Heather really suffered from an initial lack of character-building. Because her character was so bland, it was difficult to muster up any interest in her motivations and increasingly erratic behaviour.

That ending…

We’re introduced to a character that we never knew existed, who apparently had a hard-on for “justice” for the daughter she was fine ignoring during her life and forgetting about for nearly 30 years after her disappearance? And Heather’s mom not only helped cover up the murder, but then refused to even talk to her daughter about it—instead encouraging her to FORGET about it??

. Come on, now… In my eyes it could still have been salvaged if only

Heather had used some of her clinical training to reflect on Becca and her past self. Motivations are lightly pointed out, but it’s hard to feel the full tragedy of the situation because of this lack of depth.

I’ll end this review on a positive note: annoying and obvious as it sometimes felt, reading Heather’s descent into paranoia and mental breakdown was emotionally affecting. The sense of disconnection from her surroundings and loved ones was palpable, and I appreciated that this alienation didn’t immediately go away once she explained the situation to her people in the epilogue.

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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