A review by enchantedsleeper
Everyone in the Group Chat Dies by L.M. Chilton

medium-paced

2.0

I was drawn to this book by the funny title and interesting premise, but by the time I was halfway through, I was just annoyed. The story had a lot of potential, but it wasn't told in a suspenseful or interesting way.

• The main character's narration voice was annoying - not funny, just ~quirky and quippy but falling flat.
• The whole story was told with an overwrought sense of drama which removed any kind of tension from the "scary" developments. 
• As other readers have noted, the main characters all acted like teenagers instead of being in their late 20s. None of them had mature lives, just entry-level jobs and a lot of drinking (and some pot). I don't buy any of them as nearly-30-somethings; they all act like university students. (Why would a 29-year-old be doing the blushing denial dance with her roommate of equal age? For god's sake).
• Kirby was an incredibly pathetic journalist. I do take this personally as I'm one myself; that's why I know that a "trained journalist" (her words) wouldn't be learning about basic tenets of journalism from the editor at her second paid job. She also wouldn't have been kept at a job where every single story she pitched was rejected (she wouldn't even have been hired there). The idea that she would be 29 and considered too green to cover anything more than banal local stories by her editor is ridiculous. Again, she reads more like 19 than 29. She would also have some vague sense of journalistic ethics and not decide out of the blue that starting up a social media channel and pointing a phone aggressively at people made her a hotshot reporter.
• There was potential here for a genuine critique of TikTok "sleuthing" culture but it was so, so botched.
• The constant references to ~relatable shows and people were grating.
• There was genuinely good potential in the setup, in Kirby's character, her past in London, in her family background, but all of it was just executed badly.