A review by rachelunabridged
The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters

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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