[b:The Dead Girls Club|45701350|The Dead Girls Club|Damien Angelica Walters|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557438326l/45701350._SY75_.jpg|70470811]
Red Lady Red Lady
First, I would like to thank the author the publisher and Netgalley for my arc of this book. I enjoyed this book more then I expected to. Before you think negatively of me that isn’t an insult. I am a person who lives to read an awesome thriller and I have read so many that they tend to be predictable. I loved this book from start to finish so much so I finished it in one sitting. Heather Cole has a secret. When she was a tween, she killed her BFF, Becca, as part of a ritual for an urban legend called The Red Lady. Years later, Heather is a respected child psychologist who receives something unsettling in the mail. Is the past haunting Heather is her BFF still alive, or is The Red Lady…. Back. So many questions that I promise you will have the answers too by the end. I loved the relationship between the four girls in the Dead Girls Club. I also loved the past and present point of views which made me more intrigued to read the story. My goodness the ending is so well worth the wait. If you get the chance to pick this up it’s very much worth the read. I know many people are comparing this to Gone Girl. I also know that many people did not like gone girl so if seeing that in a review is scaring you off, I urge you to give this a chance you won’t regret it. ( )

I know that the lower I rate a book, the longer the review tends to be, so I'll try to be more succinct in this one. Most of what I really want to say is spoilery anyway, so here goes. I really did not like the main character...couldn't connect with her at all. I also didn't find the mystery or the twists all that interesting or surprising, and pretty strongly dislike the ending. And the synopsis is very misleading.

The story is told in 2 timelines--the NOW is first-person POV with Heather as an adult narrator. The THEN is third-person POV, but still focuses on teenage Heather. I could not stand adult Heather. She acts like a victim of this mysterious person who is sending her little things that Heather knows were directly related to the night Becca died, but uses this as an excuse to stalk people from her past and treat pretty much everyone she interacts with terribly. By the second half of the book, I would literally groan every time the book went back to the NOW storyline, because it was just so boring. Her obsession with finding out what was going on turned her into a monster. And don't even get me started on how terrible she became at her job, which just bugged me so much.

I also got to a point by halfway in the book where reading it made me feel kinda skeevy. Heather had a habit of picking at her cuticles when she was nervous and stressed, which of course she was during the entire book. As an author, it is important to give characters quirks, ticks, habits like this to make them seem real, but the amount that her peeling, biting, and scratching at herself enough to draw blood is shown got under my skin (pun intended).

I am surprised I haven't seen this in any reviews yet, but during the THEN timeline, the teenage girls go into a bit too much detail about their menstrual cycle for my taste, which makes me feel especially bad for any men who read it. There's just no need for some of what they said to be included in this book...at all.

Now about the horror aspect...I honestly can't even tell you why I requested a book classified as horror (I told myself that it must not have been listed as horror until later, but I really can't say if that's true), because I am really not into horror in general. But I steeled myself for a scary read...that hardly came. The supernatural elements that the book promised were flimsy and constantly explained away by the MC. I think I came to realize at some point that the narrator was very unreliable, which just made me doubt everything that happened in the THEN parts. I also didn't find the stories about the Red Lady scary. A bit gruesome and over-the-top, yes, but not so much scary. Near the end, the combination of reading the last 25% at night and a decently creep scene did finally give me some chills, but that was pretty much it. I'm seriously a wimp when it comes to scary things, so that might tell you something about the level of horror in this book. I also wouldn't really classify it as a thriller, so suspense is the best I could come up with.

In the end, a lot of this probably boils down to personal preference. But seriously...she gets away with murder! And it's explained away why, because she got caught up in the Red Lady story? Her mind made it real when it wasn't, so it's not her fault...does this not bother anyone else? So this wasn't a good book for me, but it has plenty of 4- and 5-star reviews. The THEN parts contain some 90s nostalgia that a lot of people will probably enjoy, and the horror and thriller elements will likely hit the mark with plenty of people. So if it seems interesting to you, please be sure to check out others' reviews for this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me a copy of this book to review. ( )

Once I got into it, this was a fast read, but I'm afraid it's not one I can recommend. In fact, I'll probably avoid the author's work in the future after this read.

I have to note here, first of all, that some of the blurbs are misleading. It's impossible to say exactly how without making this initial point a spoiler, but suffice to say that one of the subgenre types listed in a number of the blurbs on Amazon is, very simply, not accurate. And since that descriptor is one of the reasons I bought the book...well, yeah, there's disappointment number one.

That said, I enjoy many, many genres of books, suspense being one of them. So, as much as I'm annoyed that the blurbs were misleading, that alone isn't cause enough for me to feel annoyed with a book. But add to that a drawn out story that feels predictable and gets bogged down over and over again in the same types of scene/repetitive action, and one storyline of two mostly lacking suspense, and there are real problems. The fact that the final reveal came completely out of left field was another issue. I'd be more forgiving of that if this were horror (though not completely), but with this being more along the lines of suspense/mystery, I'd say that a reader should be able to be surprised at the final twist, but look back and understand how they could have seen it coming...here, that's just not possible. The final reveal is, literally, out of the blue and impossible to predict, but not in a good way. More in the-author-wants-to-play-a-trick-on-the-reader-and-didn't-remotely-earn-this-ending way.

All told, obviously, I was underwhelmed. The writing was fine, but the best moments in the book ended up not mattering all that much in general, and the way the book kept circling back in its 'now' storyline was nothing less than frustrating/boring. I loved the concept of this, but the magic of that idea got lost along the way for me. ( )

This story is told on two timelines, 1991 and the present day. Back then, we learn about the childhood that shaped the woman Heather has become today. Oddly enough this book dredged up some old memories for me, or maybe it's not that strange. Maybe we all had that one childhood besty who turned catty and left us out, or talked behind our back once puberty hit. Perhaps we all had a friend who we would rather visit when their parent wasn't home to make us feel uneasy. On the other side of the coin maybe you were that friend, and surely you had your reasons if that were the case. Back then Heather and Becca were 2 such friends. Inseparable until they weren't. Girls from very different backgrounds who loved each other like sisters. Friends for life until Heather killed her. Today Heather is a psychologist, working with troubled kids, though she has always kept her own dark childhood secret. Until now. Someone knows what happened all those years ago. Is it a supernatural being come to life from a story? Or is it something no less sinister but far more human that wants to make heather pay? You'll have to read to find out.

I received an advance copy for review. ( )

This basically read like a Mean Girls murder mystery that comes back to haunt you 3 years later. I really didn't love it. I thought it was going to be suspenseful and mysterious but you could guess where it was going by the end of the second chapter. ( )