A review by rachelsread
The Dead Friend Project by Joanna Wallace

emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Being perfectly honest, I wasn't entirely sure if I was going to like this book but I ended up loving it! Beth is initially a character that I struggled to care about but I kept listening to the audiobook and I grew to love her and pity her disastrous life in equal measure. I sympathised with her obsession over Charlotte's death and how everyone around her thought it was the ramblings of an overly stressed and exhausted single mother of three - something which they came to regret. The characters were incredibly fun and well-developed and the narrator's accents were impeccable, making it feel like there were multiple speakers rather than one. The author also planted multiple red herrings and set me up to believe that character X was the killer, which initially irritated me because I kept thinking "surely it can't be that obvious" - until the grand reveal at the end where I realised "no, actually, it's not that obvious". I was completely blindsided by who the killer was until Beth herself started to get suspicious of them, and as someone who devours crime novels and can usually figure it out before the end, it was a wonderful relief to realise that there was, in fact, a plot twist!