So disappointing! As a born and raised Kansas girl I can’t express how disappointed I am in this book. The characters were mostly unlikeable and unrealistic. I think the author had I great idea but completely dropped the ball. The only recommendation I would have is for someone NOT to read it.

As always, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

No Saints in Kansas has an interesting premise but ultimately under-delivered in what I hoped for. The characters were difficult to relate to which meant that you didn't particularly care about their struggles.

This was a cool idea that I was really excited to read but ultimately fell flat for me. A tough book to recommend for teens as it's for higher level readers and I'd probably just recommend In Cold Blood if they're reading at that level.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

November is usually quiet in Holcomb, Kansas, but in 1959, the town is shattered by the quadruple murder of the Clutter family. Suspicion falls on Nancy Clutter’s boyfriend, Bobby Rupp, the last one to see them alive.
New Yorker Carly Fleming, new to the small Midwestern town, is an outsider. She tutored Nancy, and (in private, at least) they were close. Carly and Bobby were the only ones who saw that Nancy was always performing, and that she was cracking under the pressure of being Holcomb’s golden girl. This secret connected Carly and Bobby. Now that Bobby is an outsider, too, they’re bound closer than ever.
Determined to clear Bobby’s name, Carly dives into the murder investigation and ends up in trouble with the local authorities. But that’s nothing compared to the wrath she faces from Holcomb once the real perpetrators are caught. When her father is appointed to defend the killers of the Clutter family, the entire town labels the Flemings as traitors. Now Carly must fight for what she knows is right.

Re-imagining classic novels is a pretty popular thing right now. And, for the most part, it works - the original stories leave lots of room to work with and there has been some great reworked novels. However, trying to reimagine Truman Capote's classic, In True Blood, in a young adult voice, was always going to be fraught with danger.

And the problem is, for me, that the original story loses any real shine it has from this reworking. All the characters - mainly Carly, though - were flat and unengaging. I felt that Carly was more Nancy Drew than anything, waiting for her to pop up at some point and say "Aha! I know who did it!"

The story itself had some sense of mystery but never really had any emotional depth for me. I didn't get drawn into this story in the same way that I did with the original. And I guess that's the difference. I saw some of the same names, same places as the original story but I just didn't connect to it in the same way.

There really isn't that much more to say - if the characters and plot don't get you invested in a story, then it just isn't the book for you. That was the case here for me with this one.


Paul
ARH

I am currently buying books for the library at school and I greatly enjoyed this title. I like to buy a good spread of books from YA to non fiction so that the young people read as diverse a group of books as possible. I feel like this book would be a challenging, interesting and unusual pick, that would certainly give the young people at my school a great deal to talk about at our next Book Speed Dating events. I will certainly be recommending it to our school librarian and can't wait to hear what the kids think of it too!

The beginning was a little disjointed and hard to follow, but I managed to catch onto the writer’s style. I never read In Cold
Blood, so I can’t compare how it stacks up as a retelling. All in all, this was an okay read.

It's not In Cold Blood and it's not meant to be. But it might get someone to read it.

I didn't especially enjoy this one; it did seem historically accurate for the most part, but it bothered me that people still living today were fictionalized in the book. I can't imagine that they'd necessarily appreciate having old accusations brought back up for the sake of a YA novel. I felt like it was a little invasive in that sense and that prevented me from really enjoying the book.

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
It's 1959 and outsider Carly Fleming is still trying to find her place in Holcomb, Kansas. One morning in November, everything changes when her classmate (and almost friend) Nancy Clutter and her family are found murdered. Upset and confused, Carley sets out to clear Nancy's boyfriend Bobby from allegations that he was the murderer. Along the way she encounters Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and even Perry Smith himself.
I so wanted to like No Saints in Kansas. I read In Cold Blood in college and was fascinated with the murder case. When I first read about No Saints in Kansas in VOYA Magazine, I was very excited. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed. One thing that takes away from the book is that the story has been told before-by Truman Capote. I already knew the story of the Clutter murders and kept comparing what I was reading to what I already knew. This isn't the book's fault by any means. There were aspects of the story that seemed unbelievable to me, especially Carly's friendship with Nancy. I know this stems from the fact that the murders are still fairly recent and the details are pretty well known. This makes it difficult to insert fictional characters into the narrative.
The story itself was interesting. I never thought about how the murders affected Nancy and Kenyon's friends and that's exactly what No Saints in Kansas examines. It does a great job portraying the feelings and atmosphere of Holcomb and its citizens in the aftermath of the murders. However, the story felt broken, like it had been pieced together instead of flowing seamlessly from beginning to end. It seemed like the majority of the book was focused on Carly's attemp to solve the murders. This made the last part of the book, when the Flemming family deals with Mr. Fleming defending Perry Smith, seem like an afterthought.
I remember when I read In Cold Blood. It was horrifying and kept me up at night. No Saints in Kansas is a tamer version of Capote's story, which makes it more approachable for a younger audience. Also, reading it might encourage teens to pick up In Cold Blood. Any book that leads readers to another book is a good thing!

I didn't love it, I didn't hate it. I've never read In Cold Blood, but understand this to be a retelling from a new fictional character's point of view who knew the female teen victim. I'm not one who typically reads retellings anyway, especially if the original is so well done that a remake would be painful to read. I guess I need to pick up In Cold Blood and see.
I did get annoyed that Carly kept talking about the red dress that she couldn't have now that Nancy was buried in it, but I think that's something that a teen would stress over

Fans of Truman Capote and his infamous In Cold Blood may be intrigued by this new YA novel that fictionalizes how the teens in Holcomb reacted to the tragic events of the time. While it may seem like an interesting concept to focus on the teen perspective of the notorious Clutter family murders, No Saints in Kansas is an inadequate historical fiction novel that has an unrelatable main character, and is a true story that is better left alone.

No Saints in Kansas is an historical fiction that is a poor attempt to retell Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in a young adult voice. Many of the details surrounding the actual crime are included in this reimagined story, however there are many strange additions to this narrative that are unnecessary and at times disturbing. For example, there is an odd section in the book that details the slaughtering of an animal, which has no real connection to any of the facts or the plot. There are many random inclusions of characters as well, such as JFK, which just seems to add more confusion for the reader.

Carly is a fictional character that Brashear has created to be the teen voice for No Saints in Kansas. Unfortunately, Carly is such a whiny, and unrealistic character that she just makes no sense at all. It is almost as though her character is trying to take on a Nancy Drew role in the novel. However, the behaviours Carly exhibits are impetuous and not well-planned. It really disappointed me as I was reading, just how ridiculous Carly’s character is.

When I first saw this book was coming out, I have to admit that I was really excited by it. I don’t know much about Bobby Rupp and his connection to Nancy Clutter, so my interest in this book was really piqued. While I was reading No Saints in Kansas, I started searching the internet for details and was surprised to find that many of the individuals included in the narrative are still living, including Bobby. I also discovered that many of these people who lived through this horrifying time are still grieving. This information really made me stop to think about the difference between Capote’s non-fiction book versus the fictionalization of the facts in No Saints in Kansas. It saddens me that there are characters in this book that are still living and to have a fictional story written about them is just wrong.

No Saints in Kansas is a reimagining of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood - we follow the main character as she tries to grapple with the murder of a family and figure out the "who" and "why".

Told in very short chapters, we are introduced to a vaguely likable character who cyclically makes bad decision after bad decision, with little to no consequences, and the conclusion is quickly and neatly tied up in a way that is far from satisfying.

I get obsessed with court cases and was captivated by captors in cold blood. I enjoyed the factionalized Version

I finished In Cold Blood shortly before reading this novel and perhaps Capote's masterful depiction of the Clutter murders made this one pale in comparison. However, it seems more than that to me.

The author made the strange decision to portray Nancy Clutter as something of a "mean girl," a character trait that was absent from Capote's account. Turning an actual beloved victim of a brutal murder into a vain, snooty schoolgirl seems inappropriate to me.

While sticking mostly to the facts, the author inserted Carly and her friends into the narrative, but didn't manage to add anything new to the story. Choosing to make Carly's mother a close friend of "Jack," otherwise known as the future President Kennedy, seemed a superfluous addition to Carly's tale. Additionally, Carly's descriptions of her life and the vernacular used by her and her friends didn't seem entirely period accurate to me.

Carly herself was a dreadful character. She makes the murder of Nancy and her family all about how she feels (now she will never get the chance to be Nancy's friend, or even worse perhaps she can now be Sue's best friend?). She continually makes horrible decisions and can't seem to make up her mind whether she is grounded or not (granted I read an advanced galley and this may be corrected by the final draft).

On the whole, readers would be better served by sticking with Capote's original narrative.

This is a captivating and creative reimagining of an already well-known story from a fresh angle. I think this book is perfect for anyone already interested in this case or that enjoys true crime stories.

I never read In Cold Blood, and maybe that was my problem, but I just could not get into No Saints in Kansas no matter how hard I tried. Ugh.

The main character, Carly, was really annoying and did not make good decisions. However, it wasn't the kind of bad decisions where you can see where she was coming from or at least see her reasoning behind it, rather, they were the kind of bad decisions that made me sit there and just think "why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why."

I didn't like the romance. It was forced and predictable, and I kept reading Landry's name as Laundry.

I got about halfway through before I sat back and realized that I was indifferent towards literally everything in this novel. It wasn't exciting. I was just feeling apathy and was also vaguely annoyed.

The only thing that was compelling in this novel is the fact that the murder in this book actually happened, but in the end I just put down the book and read the In Cold Blood wikipedia page instead.

Never having read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, I much enjoyed this book.

This book reminded me a lot of The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett, where the main character places herself in the middle of an investigation and you are not really sure why. The main character wasn't that close with the girl who is murdered, and yet she is the one who gets in the middle of everything. Based on a true story.

A quiet and gripping fictionalized account of the Clutter family murders in Kansas, November 1959. The author taps into the fear, and later ostracization, that grips Carly and her family in the aftermath of the murders. While this book lacks the bells and whistles of other true crime-esque teen stories (sex, drugs, rock and roll), it's incredibly realistic for the time and place. Easter eggs abound in the novel as well, with periodic appearances by Truman Capote, Harper Lee, and even Richard Avedon. Definitely recommending to teens who enjoy thought-provoking mysteries, true crime, and books that are not gory.

Good but not great. Wanted to like it more than I did. Good idea but nothing drew me in.