I really wanted to love this book, but I just wasn't pulled in to the drama like I expected to be. Still, a fast read and perfect for summer. Three stars because it wasn't memorable enough to stick with me for the long haul.

I hate that I have to do this but I have to be honest with my reviews, I found the whole thing messy. It went backwards and forwards way to much. This wouldn't of been so bad had it of been from the perspective of just one person, but you had Natalie's, Lauren's and Ashley's stories to keep up with.
I really wanted to like this book and I do believe it does have the potential but needs some nips and tucks. I had to rate it accordingly and with it taking so long to read it two stars it has to be.
I would like to hear other people's opinions on this.

Ashley, Natalie and Lauren have had a strained relationship for about a year. They make a decision to go to Mexico, hoping the relaxed atmosphere will help them heal old wounds. From the very beginning of the trip the ladies still have a hard time letting go of their anger. When Angela turns up missing after a night of too much partying, Natalie and Lauren are left to try and find her.

This is told in alternating chapters of before and after Angela went missing. In both timeframes, we learn of the many things that have caused the relationships to struggle.

This is the first book I've read by Liz Fenton. I can't really say there was one character that I liked, but I'm ok with that. For this story, that concept worked. I was interested in finding out what happened to Angela and what caused the riff between the three. Towards the end, I did find myself skimming through some chapters. All in all, it was an enjoyable read.


I received this from Lake Union publishing via Netgalley.

Natalie, Ashley, and Lauren have been friends since college, but lately their friendship has been showing a lot of strain. In fact, the trio has been estranged from Lauren for a year. So Ashley gets the idea for a girls' trip to Tulum, Mexico to help repair their friendship and mend fences. But once there, they find that fixing things isn't so easy. Each woman brings so much baggage and anger to the friendship. Natalie is angry at Ashley regarding the beauty business, BloMe, that they founded together. Lauren holds a grudge with Ashley relating to the death of her husband, Geoff. Both Natalie and Lauren are angry at themselves for letting their worlds revolve around Ashley. And their anger simmers even more when Ashley starts spending more time with Marco, a man she meets in Mexico, then with them. Suddenly, Ashley disappears. Did she run away with Marco? Was she kidnapped? Or--Natalie and Lauren fear--did they snap in anger at Ashley and harm her?

I had never read anything by the Fenton and Steinke writing team but had heard good things, so decided to try this one out. Its format takes a little getting used to: it switches in both time and narration, so you'll get Ashley, three days before the disappearance, and then the next chapter could be Lauren, two days after the disappearance. Once you get in the groove, it works pretty well, and builds suspense fairly effectively. Pieces of the story are slowly revealed, as we both don't know what happened to divide the friends in their friendship and, of course, don't know what happened to make Ashley disappear.

Honestly, I had just enough curiosity to find out what happened to Ashley that kept me reading. This was an interesting novel and certainly tense and intriguing, but I couldn't muster much interest or sympathy in these characters. Man, these women were just awful! I would not want a single one of them as my friend, that's for sure. Their friendship problems seemed petty, overblown, and childish, and I lost patience and interest with their myriad issues. There was just so much constant bickering. Bickering, drinking, more fighting, drinking, some more fighting. Ugh. They were so overly dramatic and even worse, most of the chapters would end with a sentence that had such an overblown "dramatic flair" to it that I found myself rolling my eyes at times.

A lot of the book just felt hokey, and I found myself wanting them to just go home and get their own lives (although their husbands didn't seem much better, honestly). Still, as mentioned, the reveals are interesting, and there is enough interest in what happened to Ashley to keep you reading. If you can get past the irritating characters, you'll be intrigued, albeit potentially annoyed.

With three best friends, a troubling past, and hurtful secrets, Girls’ Night Out by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke delivers an interesting take on what friendship should, and shouldn’t be.

The book starts off in an intriguing way, and had me wanting to keep turning the page to see what would happen next. Each chapter was either before Ashley went missing, or after, and showcased the little details that would foreshadow the main plot of the book, and had each character give their own perspective. As the book continued on, you start to learn about why Ashley, Lauren and Natalie slowly began to drift away from each other, and why suddenly Ashley wanted them to come back together as friends.

But, by the time I reached the middle of the book, I began to find myself a little bit irritated at the three main characters. These three women were middle aged, married mothers, and rather than being somewhat mature regarding the problems in their friendship, they just really acted like young girls in high school. Although each of the characters have gone through terrible things, everything they said or done was childish, and unrealistic in a way. There wasn’t a sense of realism in these characters, but rather, it seemed that these characters preferred to drown themselves in drama and self pity. None of these characters had a speck of empathy for their friends, and just continued to fight with each other, and all those around them.

The plot was very interesting, and the premise of the entire book had me excited to finish the story and see how the mystery unravelled. But unfortunately, the characters ruin the book. The three women did not grow as the story progressed, they remained flat through the whole book. I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately found it disappointing.

Overall, I’d give this read a 5/10 stars. It had a great plot, and at times, a great dialogue between characters, but, the character development and just overall characters within the book were frustrating and childish.

3.5 Stars
Girls' Night Out is a great summer beach read. Told in the POVs of all three girlfriends, and alternating between before and after Ashley's disappearance, it's a fast paced and suspenseful tale. I felt the reveal of Ashley's fate at the end was a bit rushed, while at the same time I found the description of the climbing temple trip a bit too descriptive for my taste. Although I didn't find it to be quite as chilling as I hoped, I still enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more from these authors.

Interesting and well-written suspense thriller about estranged three best friends who travel to Mexico to try and restore their previous relationship that has fallen by the wayside. One of the girls goes missing after an evening of drinking and fighting, and then other two are left trying to figure out where she has gone... The story is told from multiple point of view and also different time sequences that are not in order. I had a little bit of trouble keeping up with the characters and the story line but nonetheless still suspenseful and revealing secrets about the friends and twists as the story progresses. Definitely worth reading but not a super surprise at the end... Great lighter summer mystery read!

Girls' Night Out follows 3 friends who take a trip to Mexico in hopes of rekindling their friendship after a series of events gone wrong happen the previous year. Despite warnings to be careful, Ashley, the dominant one in the group, gets tangled up with a mysterious man, Marco. When Ashley disappears, Natalie and Lauren are concerned that fights during the trip may have caused her to want to disappear. In the end, I really enjoyed the book but I have to say that it was hard to fully get into. There was a lot of background knowledge on Chichen Itza, which I'm sure the authors were trying to make the most of since they spent a lot of time in Mexico researching the book. I do have to say that I was very surprised/pleased with the ending though!

After reading Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke’s book, The Good Widow, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Girls’ Night Out. Although I found the story to be entertaining and suspenseful at first, I quickly lost interest because it seemed as if the same facts were being repeated over and over again. The story is written from the perspectives of the three main characters, best friends Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren, who have had a major falling out and who decide to take a girls’ trip to Tulum, Mexico to relax and rekindle their friendships. The reader is given before and after points of views and is written around an incident in which Ashley disappears. Natalie wakes up on the beach not remembering what happened the previous night. Lauren had left Ashley and Natalie at the bar and had gone back to the hotel that night. So where was Ashley and why wasn’t she answering her phone? From there, the pieces of the story are given to the reader through the eyes of the characters. A new character, Marco, is thrown into the mix as a mysterious local character as well. Do we trust him as a spiritual guide or is he a scam artist? I found each of the characters to be well described and each had his or her own distinct personality. Each one also had an interesting and realistic backstory. I felt the story could have used more twists instead of ending the way it did.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc of Girls' Night Out. Ashley invites her long time friends, Natalie and Lauren, on a girls trip to Mexico to try to repair their friendships and bring them closer together. Ashley goes missing and Natalie and Lauren try to discover what happened to her. The novel flips back & forth between the days before she went missing and the days after. I enjoy a good suspense novel but this one seemed very predictable to me and the ending was not a surprise. I loved The Year We Turned Forty and Your Perfect Life by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke so this book was a disappointment to me.

I really enjoyed reading this! It was a great page turner and definitely surprised me at the end! I'm excited to read more from Liz and Lisa - they make an awesome team.

Three friends drifting apart decide to go on a girls’ trip to Mexico to try and salvage their relationship with one another. One of the friends, Ashley, goes missing. Did she runaway with the mysterious man she had been hanging out with or was it foul play? This book was lacking is substance and suspense. I kept wanting to give up on reading it, but it had good reviews and people who had read it encouraged me to stick with it. Girls’ Night Out was very slow to start. It wasn’t until I was 60% through the book that it started to pick up a little. At about 80%, the book was interesting, but there wasn’t a lot of mystery or suspense still. The ending wasn’t worth suffering through the first half of this dry read.

I love reading books by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke. They're friends and writing partners (and I was luckily enough to get to meet them at a recent event in Chicago). Their unique dynamic allows them to craft incredibly authentic and nuanced female friendships, in a way that rings true and makes me think of the relationships in my own life. Girls Night Out was tense. Three longtime friends take a trip to Mexico for some much needed away time to try and get reconnected with one another. They've had a bit of a falling out- two are business partners who are disagreeing with the direction their business should take and one is a very recent widow who blames part of her husband's death on her friend. The three quickly discover that they're not quite ready to reconcile yet... And one of them winds up missing. I loved reading about Tulum Mexico and definitely want to take a trip there- but I think I'll stick with girls I'm not fighting with :) If you like to read realistic books set in tropical locations with a lot of suspense and drama, I can see this working for you.

Girls’ Night Out was hard to put down! I enjoyed the dramatic, mysterious tone. Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren have been friends for many years. But their friendships have been strained recently because of some things that have been said and done. They arrange to go away on a trip to Tulum, Mexico in the hopes of repairing their relationships. As the days go by while they are in Mexico, they realize just how serious their conflicts are and tensions build. Then on their last night there, Ashley disappears. This last night was perhaps the worst for all of them as the strain of their conflicts finally hits them. What happened to her? And who was involved? The secrets of Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren are revealed as each of their stories are told. Besides the strain of the relationships between them, each of the women has her own personal struggle. Liz and Lisa have created a twisted plot where everything becomes more mysterious as the storyline goes on!

Natalie, Lauren and Ashley are three best friends that have been through hell together and are attempting at making their way back. Ashley is miserable in their marriage and invites the girls to Mexico to try to salvage their 20 years of friendships. Lauren is trying to get through the grief of her late husband. Natalie is dealing with her husband's overspending. The girls share their problems, make up, fight and then have to deal with Marco, the local. I loved Girls's Night Out. One thing I think could have been done better is the character development. Liz and Lisa did a great job keeping me entranced and on the path of suspense but I would have liked them to go a bit deeper. I would absolutely recommend this to a friend. I thought I knew what was going to happen but then a huge twist occurred.

I am so thankful for NetGalley giving me a free copy of Girls' Night Out.

Girls Night Out is a great book - my new favorite of Liz and Lisa! I could not wait t o finish it to see what really happened. I enjoy the flashbacks to get the back story on the characters. I think most women have been in a friendship with 2 others (there is often difficulties with 3 in a group). Liz and Lisa perfectly describe the friendship dynamics that we have all been a part of. I great book that I highly recommend!

I read this book in 48 hours - I found it quite slow to start and I wasn't quite sure that I would finish it, but once I got through the first few chapters I couldn't put it down.

Girls’ Night Out is my first book by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steike and it certainly won’t be my last. This book is about 3 women, Ashley, Natalie and Lauren - long term friends who have a complicated relationship and some unresolved issues. Ashley decides to take them all to Mexico for a girls' holiday so that they can sort things out.

During a Yoga class one day, they meet Marco who lives at the resort and owns a smoothie bar nearby. He takes a shine to Ashley and the other girls start to get annoyed with him hanging around all the time - they don't understand Ashley's relationship with him and are quite suspicious of his motives.

Then Natalie wakes up on the morning of their departure, soaking on the beach with no idea how she got there. The book is a series of current time and flashbacks to help the reader piece together what has happened. The plot is thick and sticky! I really enjoyed this book, my first by this writing duo - I will definitely look at their books again,

I feel like I wasted so much precious reading time on this book and every moment was painful. I love me a good thriller and I was super excited to read one about a girls’ night gone wrong because I love a good girls’ night as much as the next lady, but I also love murder and mystery. Double score. Silly me, I also thought that this was going to be some kind of badass “best girlfriends vs. the bad guy” story.

HAHAHAH <-- that’s now me laughing at then me

Nat, Ashley and Lauren decide to have a girls’ trip to Tulum to try to repair their friendship, which has fallen apart. Except apparently none of these ladies got that memo because they were so ridiculously petty, argumentative and stubborn. This book gives us all three POVs and not once did it seem like they genuinely wanted to bury the hatchet, besides in each other’s backs. Every attempt to try and “resolve things” turned into a STUPID argument, where they would scream at each other and storm off. You know, like reasonable adults trying to move passed issues. Throughout the whole book I questioned why they even agreed to this trip, it was clear they didn’t like each other. They even went back and forth on whether or not they even wanted to repair anything. WHY ARE WE HERE, LADIES!?

During all this hissing and clawing and suburban housewife inner turmoil (that I didn’t care about) Ashley disappears. Then Lauren and Nat are all, “Remember our “good friend” Ashley? The one we HATED? She’s missing, omfg this is so sad”. Now Lauren and Nat care about her, they panic, they cry, they try to figure out what happened while being suspicious of each other. Yada, yada, boohoo, good riddance honestly. Would’ve been better if they all just died.

Not only do these characters suck as a cluster but they are the worst as individuals. They’re boring, and trivial and just so ridiculously annoying. For example: Lauren’s late husband was abusive, Ashley finds out and helps Lauren see that she needs to leave him. Lauren tells him “I’m leaving you because you’re an abusive asshole” and he has a heart attack and dies. That scenario in and of itself is completely unrealistic and ridiculous, but what is even more so is that LAUREN THEN BLAMES ASHLEY FOR HIS DEATH. Another example: At one point Ashley decides it’s a great idea to stand on the sacred table in El Castillo, which they climbed illegally while being in Chichén Itzá illegally, and scream her problems at Lauren. SERIOUSLY THESE CHARACTERS ARE THE WORST. They fill me with rage.

The plot is boring and I don’t even care about touching on it. Though what I do care to talk about is the thing that bothered me the most about this book, and that’s how much it villainizes Mexico. Reading this book felt like sitting in a circle of American housewives around their perfectly decorated tables, in their Stepford homes, while they talk about how scary the world is with an emphasis on the Spanish speaking world. Yes, Mexico has gangs and violence and bad people and you could get killed BUT SO DOES EVERY OTHER COUNTRY!! Every country is dangerous. Every country has bad people and opportunists. Just like every country has bad, every country also has good and this book touched on none of the good and beauty of Mexico and it’s people. The amount of times I read lines like “*insert bad thing here* this is Mexico after all” filled my travel loving soul with rage. I hateeee people like this. Sorry not sorry. Maybe I would have been a little more lenient if they were in Mexico City but they are in Tulum, IN A RESORT. *breaths fire*

So yeah, I didn't enjoy this. The mystery wasn't intriguing enough to make me push passed how much I hated these characters and how boring everything was.

Wow....I really enjoyed this book and the ending just caught me off guard until the very end.
Girls Night Out follows three women Lauren, Ashley, and Natalie on a trip to Mexico to hopefully reconnect and rekindle their friendship. Each women is currently going through their own trials in life which is causing turbulence in their relationships and friendships. The story begins with Natalie waking up on the beach with no memory of what happened the night before and Ashley is missing. What happened to her a d does someone know more than they are saying?

On an impromptu vacation to a beautiful resort in Tulum, Mexico, Ashley tries to repair her relationships with her longtime best friends. Lauren, struggles to forgive Ashley for a heated argument after losing her husband a year ago. Natalie, grapples with a big decision she and Ashley must make for their company. When Ashley disappears on their last night of vacation, Natalie and Lauren must piece together the events from the night to find Ashley.

The story unfolded through each of the girls' accounts of their vacation, with the timeline going back and forth between past and present time at the resort. Through their narratives more secrets are discovered but I found that each woman behaved selfishly, carelessly, and childishly they should have at 40 years old. However, this did not keep me from rushing to find out what had happened. I enjoyed the ending of the book and the way the book was written.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union publishing for an electronic copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.