A review by bookstarbri
You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

What a thrilling book!!! I so enjoyed reading this. At just barely 240 pages, it was a super quick read, but a lot of fun. I wasn't expecting it to be what it ended up being, so it was a nice surprise of a book. I think what I loved about it most was that it subverted a lot of my expectations. As someone who watches slashers and horror movies a lot, it was nice to read one that also was super exciting. I found myself reacting to it the way I would react to an actual slasher movie.

Charity is such a good character and I love the way Bayron took a different route to the Final Girl trope. The characters in this were really well done and it's surprising that Bayron was able to make them so dynamic in such a short amount of time. Ultimately, I'm not quite giving it 5 stars just because I wish it was a teeny bit longer. I think two pretty big scenes at the end and even the set up at the beginning could've been slower to build up the tension. The twists in this were especially good and very well-timed. One of them wasn't super surprising to me but I don't think it was necessarily meant to be the biggest twist, so that was fine. The rest of them were shocking and I really wasn't expecting them. But overall, this was a really cool book and I can see it being a favorite for many especially around the spooky time of the year! 

Note: this is a review of an eARC provided by Bloomsbury & NetGalley!

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