Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/a-good-girls-guide-to-murder-by-holly-jackson/

When I first started reading this, I was thrown off by the EPQ style format. By about three chapters in, I loved it. Holly Jackson nailed the balance of EPQ-style with actual narrative prose, so we were still getting information conventionally but the EPQ aspect of the novel really made me feel involved as a reader. Because of the way Pip's notes were addressed, it felt like she was talking to the reader and explaining everything that she'd found. It also meant that I kept accidentally rinsing through chapters I was supposed to be waiting for the book club to read, because I'd blink and I'd read five chapters. I felt like I was a part of the investigation, and I think that made me even more involved in hunting for and putting together clues than I usually am.

I loved Pip as our MC. She's a clever character, but not excessively so. I never had one of those moments of 'yeah sure, as if' when she connected some dots or came up with a new plan. Everything she did felt like the reasonable response of a highly logical character piecing things together. I think that's pretty important in this type of story, because there's nothing more irritating than a character who has all the answers even if it doesn't make sense. She was part of a dynamic duo with Ravi, and I don't want to delve too deeply into Ravi's character because spoilers, but he's Sal's disgraced brother who always believed his big brother was innocent. And. I. Love. Him. He's kind of the sweetest, and the whole way through I was swearing that if he turned out bad I was going to revolt. Every time he called Pip Sarge or trouble, a baby unicorn was born.

As for the clues to solving this mystery? I missed a lot of them. I thought I was being hyper-obsessive with this book, and while we were reading it there were a lot of incredibly wild, conspiracy-level theories about who had killed Andie and Sal, up to and including Andie herself. We basically didn't stop throwing ideas around and I'm not sure that we got any of the facts right in our final version. Our investigative incompetence was as impressive as Pip's intelligence. By the time I got three quarters of the way into this book, I was practically crawling up the walls because I needed to know the answers so badly and I had a lot of possible leads and no answers. I might have worked some things out if I hadn't been Christmas-exhausted, but really? I had no idea.

That alone makes this book a must-read for anyone who likes YA crime/mystery. I usually guess who was responsible or why pretty early in a book. I'm obsessive, so I pick up on tiny details and extrapolate them out into an answer. I did fucking not get to the right answer here. And I love that. Holly Jackson didn't hide the clues, they were right there the whole time, it was just a matter of eliminating the right information. I didn't feel at any point that any of the facts had been 'hidden' from us for a big reveal. Instead, I felt like this book managed a very well-earned rug pull at the end when I found out the truth, after a few chapters that had absolutely no chill. If anyone could put this book down and walk away after approximately chapter 45, I want to borrow their self-control. It was a roller-coaster to the end, and I didn't want to get off until I knew everything.

DNF @ 28% - maybe this one would be better not in audio. there's no distinction between the POVs so I have to keep working out who tf is talking and honestlyyyy I'm bored and don't want to listen to another 13 hours of this

DNF @ 40% - I don't think I'm in the right headspace for this right now, this is on my 'come back to' list tbh.

Thanks to Inkyard Press for sending me an ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

I've been on a real thriller kick lately, so I threw my TBR out of the window so I could pick this one up. This was a well-written YA thriller with dual POV between two teenage characters from schools with very different reputations. Jenna is a student at Preston Prep School, while Adam is a student at Rookwood, a local reform school. Jenna is out taking photographs at the Bay when she hears shouts for help, and she sees Adam pulling one of her classmates out of the water. They think that they've stumbled across a tragic accident until it turns out that Colleen was murdered - and Jenna's best friend is the main suspect.

I read this thriller in one sitting. It wasn't the most compelling YA thriller I've read recently, but it was an enjoyable and fairly quick read. I liked the dual narrative POVs and the way the book added mixed media sections to add in police interviews and other details for the case. I think the flashbacks could have been made a little clearer, at times I was struggling to work out exactly when each of the flashbacks was taking place, but I do think that they helped the story unfold in an interesting way, unveiling the mystery piece by piece.

I didn't buy into the main characters' romance, unfortunately. It was alright, but they had this pre-existing tension that I don't think was made clear enough at first. It felt like they were both drawn to each other for some big secret reason, which fell flat a little bit once I realised what it really was. Also, they didn't really have much chemistry. I liked them working together to find out what had happened as their friends were implicated in the crime but they didn't convince me as a romantic couple. Ultimately, the ending fell a smidge flat for me too. I just didn't feel like the twist was seeded enough for me to feel like we could have predicted it - my favourite part of a thriller - but it also wasn't shocking enough to be a completely blind twist. There was nothing particularly wrong with this book, it was a perfectly fine thriller, but equally I won't be raving about it. I think I'll be on the look out for any more thrillers from this author, as the writing is good and it was easy to read.

Full review on my blog, 15/11/2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/11/15/survive-the-night/

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC of this book, it has not affected my honest review.

Content warnings: car accident, grief (parents and close friend), murder, stabbing, suicide, kidnapping, torture.

This book. Wow. I actually listened to the audiobook of this one, which is an experience that I highly recommend. I was hooked to the last page, and even when I finished work I kept listening while I did my chores so that I didn't have to leave the story until I was finished.

Survive the Night is a compelling page-turner of a story, a YA thriller that leans into the fear of being trapped with a stranger to create a claustrophobic sort of fear that left me so, so worried for our main character, Charlie. Charlie is running away from college, trying to get some space and get home to Ohio so she can recover from the guilt and grief she feels about the loss of her best friend, the most recent victim of a serial killer called the Campus Killer.

The time setting for this book was a perfect choice. With no mobile phones, Charlie is truly stranded the moment she gets into the car, so when she starts to realise that Josh might be lying about his identity, she has nowhere to go but onwards. Additionally, Charlie suffers from intense visual hallucinations. These are described in the book as 'movies in her head', but are very much a trauma response that Charlie is coming to terms with. I really enjoy the way these are portrayed. I haven't had hallucinations in a hot minute, but it felt authentic to me in the way it was shown and the way Charlie handles them, and I loved the depth they added to this book as Charlie had to work out whether it was Josh or her brain that was gaslighting her, and by extension the reader. It took 'unreliable narrator' to the extreme, and I really enjoyed it.

I was *completely* taken in by every single one of the plot twists in this book. It had me screeching into Andee's DMs the entire time, as Riley Sager dragged me along for the ride. I finished this book and immediately put a hold on another Riley Sager book at the library because I was sold on this excellent writing style and clever plotting. The ending was a little... out of the blue, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book, a lot of which came down to Charlie herself. I *adored* Charlie as the main character. She has strong final girl energy, and I loved how brave she was when I would have just immediately given in and died. It made it so easy to root for her the whole way through, and I was ready to see her kick ass by the time I started getting suspicious of Josh.

2.5 stars

i'm not gonna review this fully but i do wanna make it very clear that while this is marketed as dubcon, this is a noncon story!! the first half is categorically noncon, nothing dubious about it.

anyway if you like fantasy/mythology stories and want something sapphic with a dark enemies to lovers romance threaded through it, go ahead and pick this up but i wouldn't say this was particularly romance forward. it's a book about persephone, not hades and persephone