Yeeeesh. This one did not work for me AT. ALL. The story here is about three 40-somethings who take a girls’ trip in order to reconnect. There’s drama between two of them due to the fact that they hit the bigtime with their company “BloMe” (okay I’ll give credit where it’s due to that name) when they invented something every woman didn’t even know they needed until they saw it . . . .

Now one wants to sell and the other doesn’t. Both because of reasons that come out that I didn’t give a rip about. The other friend is there . . . . because I guess the author thought she needed a third wheel/someone to exchange dialogue with about what a dumb bitch the one who goes missing is????

Anyway, as I just said one of these cardboard cutouts idiots goes missing and the book is about trying to find her.

Warning for anyone who might be interested in going on a trip with me – there’s a pretty simple code you should respect and it goes a lil’ summin’ like . . . . .

HOES BEFORE BROS.

If you don’t follow it????? You get what you deserve.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

From the very first line I was hooked!! Three friends, a trip to Mexico and lots of alcohol, what could go wrong! Unfortunately something does go wrong, very wrong and then that ending, wow!! I loved this book and will be recommending it to the ladies in my book...

I loved ‘The Good Widow’ by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke so I was really looking forward to their next book, ‘Girls Night Out’. It certainly did not disappoint.
Ashley, Natalie and Lauren head to Mexico for a trip to mend the rifts in their friendship. After a girls night out they awake to a chilling discovery.
The story is told in flashbacks to a year ago as well as to several days before the girls night out. These flashbacks keep the reader quickly turning the pages to find out what happened to cause the rift in their friendship as well as what occurred during the girls night out.
I loved how the author used flashbacks to build up the suspense in the novel. This book is an adrenaline rush that will keep you guessing until the end.
I received an Advance Review Copy. All opinions are my own.

4 Stars and A Margarita🍹 🌟🌟🌟🌟

My daughter and I were out to dinner tonight and we were talking about things and it came up that I am a girls girl, her... not so much... i’ve always had strong female friendships, and I’ve been beyond blessed to have had the amazing friends that I have had throughout my entire life.... yes even in high school! However even the strongest of friendships can be complex... and the more friends you add to the group the more challenging it can become, it’s hard to maintain a balance... sometimes even the most innocent of actions can cause a great deal of hurt... The fact that the authors of this book are friends added so much authenticity to the book, their friendship poured through the pages...

Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren have been the best of friends for decades... and even though they have been estrange from Lauren for the past year, Ashley is convinced she can rectify this with a fabulous girls getaway to Mexico... some sun, some sand, some tequila, and things will be as good as they used to be, right? Wrong! There are a lot of secrets and hurt between these girls, and even the best of margaritas cannot quickly fix this...

This really was a book about secrets and forgiveness... now I am a true oversharer so I wasn’t always sure why they didn’t share some of this information with one another? especially if they are friends? Just seems like a lot of problems could have been solved if everyone knew what was going on... but this seems to be very common in books and in life... seriously these girls knew how to keep a secret after three margaritas I’d be spilling my secrets to whoever would listen, LOL.... The forgiveness in this book was interesting, I felt some things were more forgivable than others.... how far can you push someone before they’ve had enough?

I liked how we got all three of the girls perspectives... Ashley was a hard character to have much sympathy for... she kept saying how much she wanted to repair their friendship, and then she had a guy spend most of their vacation with them? I would have found this so annoying! A girls vacation should be just that... a GIRLS vacation! Natalie and Lauren were much more likable and relatable, there were times in this book I thought they should just be BFFs and forget about Ashley!

This book really had a bit of everything friendship, secrets, forgiveness and a mystery... where is Ashley? And will Natalie recover her memory? This was just such a good story that truly explored the complexities of female friendship.... the good, the bad, and the ugly.... cannot wait to see what these authors have in store for us next!

Absolutely recommend to everyone who loves a book filled with secrets, mystery, and complicated female relationships...

*** Many thanks to Lake Union for my copy of this book ***

Girls Night Out is the story of three longtime friends who’ve drifted apart, physically and emotionally, over the last year. Ashley begs Lauren and Natalie to come with her for a spiritually cleaning weekend in Tulum, Mexico to reconnect. The trip doesn’t start well, and continues badly until eventually, one of the girls is found to be missing. What happened to her? How many secrets will be realized in her absence? Will she be found?

Ashley, Lauren and Natalie are real and well developed characters - basically women I know or am. I found many similarities in myself in their thoughts, comments and actions. I understood and connected to their friendships, emotions, and arguments. This kept me turning page after page. The questions they were trying to find clarity on where not unlike many question I’ve asked myself. And on top of all this, what a thriller! Twists and turns that I did not see coming. The ending was such a shock! A definite must read in my opinion.

I really enjoyed this book! I clearly need to read all the books authored by these two because I also liked “The Good Widow.” This book drew me in from the first page and kept me intrigued until the end. It tells the story of three female friends on a trip, working to restore their friendship, when one of them goes missing. Despite the fact that I got annoyed by the poor choices of these grown adult women, I appreciated the real descriptions of the difficulties that even best friends can face. The ending did not amaze me, but I’d recommend this book. 4/5 ⭐️ s. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me access to review this book.

What can I say? This one grabs you at the start and just keeps you hooked. The story is told in different time lines through the eyes of each of the girlfriends, their own perception of the action and their relationship with each other.

There is suspense and intrigue in a story about 3 girlfriends who vacation together in Mexico. Why did they go? Was it to reconnect with each other or to right some wrong? As the story progresses, you learn more and more about each of the girls and their secrets.

Read this book! It is well written with an intricate story line of mystery and suspense with characters one can relate to. I had heard a lot about books by Liz Fenton and Lisa Stenke, it's all true. I am a new fan.

Thank you Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

While the story features some elements of a thriller like suspense and a missing person, the focus is much more on the relationships between the three women. Although they call themselves friends they sure don’t seem like it. It doesn’t seem like they even like each other at all! The majority of the problems between the women are due to them not communicating very well. For all their talking they don’t actually discuss the things that they need to talk about. It’s pretty frustrating to read! There are so many secrets, and they are big secrets. The kind of thing I would spill to my friends in a hot second. Isn’t that what friends are for?

I am the same age as these women and despite their apparent success in life they seem incredibly naïve and silly. All three of them were rather annoying. They argue constantly, and not just about small stuff but about huge super important things. While my friends and I might bicker about where to go for dinner we would never disagree about the big issues. We wouldn’t be friends if we did! The women in this story are so hurtful and awful to each other. They purposefully say things that they know will be devastating to each other. I just can’t imagine why they even want to be friends. They should just cut bait and move on! Are other women this cruel with their friends? Maybe I'm just lucky and have incredible friends (They really are awesome!) I just can't fathom why anyone would want to spend time with people who treat you so poorly.

Although female relationships are the core of this story this is an absolute page turner and the suspense is pretty intense, especially at the beginning. It’s good fun for a summer afternoon!

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

Ashley, Natalie and Lauren have been friends for a long time. Now that they are approaching 40, Ashley suggests that they spend a week at a resort in Tulum Mexico to renew their friendship.

Ashley is married to Jason and has two daughters. Natalie is married to Ben and also has two daughters. Lauren has no children and has been a widow for nearly a year.

Ashley and Natalie have worked together for a number of years creating their own company and have now introduced a special styling brush that they hope will be sold to Revlon, thus increasing their money.

Ashley and Jason are having marital problems and Ashley is considering divorce. Ashley and Lauren had had a falling out around the time Lauren’s husband died and Ashley is hoping to mend their relationship. Natalie has just learned from her husband, Ben, that he made a bad investment which has wiped out their savings. Now, Natalie needs to convince Ashley that they must sell their company so Natalie can take her part of the proceeds to support her family.

When the three women arrive in Tulum, they start drinking a lot and Ashley, especially, wants to party. She meets a man named Marco who latches himself onto her and takes over their vacation. In doing so, the three women don’t get a chance to have their heart-to-heart talks that they so desperately need. When Ashley goes missing, they are frantic to find out what happened to her.

As I was reading this book, I found myself shaking my head and asking “what are you, twelve?” The heavy drinking and rather loose morals of Ashley was a turn-off. Rather than concentrating on their so-called friendships, Ashley had her head in the clouds talking about finding herself. These friendships I found to be toxic and, quite frankly, they would all have been better off just going their separate ways. I had hoped to find women with some brains but these were clearly air-heads. Not for me.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Girls’ Night Out by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke is a psychological thriller that has multiple points of view along with alternating timelines. The story begins at the end of a week long vacation between three very good friends but then goes back to the days leading up to that morning while also following what happens from that morning onward.

All three ladies in this book are given a voice to show how each is dealing with each event as the book goes along. Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren have all been good friends for years but at this point in their lives all the relationships have gotten pretty rocky so Ashley had planned the week in Tulum, Mexico in an attempt to mend their friendship.

As the story begins Natalie wakes up on the beach the morning after what should have been their last night together with no memory of how she got there. As Natalie returns to the room she shares with Ashley she finds her friends hasn’t returned and gets worried something happened that Natalie isn’t remembering.

I have to say having read The Good Widow and now Girls’ Night Out what I find Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke absolutely excel at is getting their settings across in their stories. It really felt as if I’d stepped into Tulum right from the moment I began to read and this made following the story as the secrets and lies were unraveled all the more fun to me. To be honest these ladies were a hot mess but it was a compelling mess as I waited to see just what had happened that fateful night.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

"Girls Night Out" is most of the time over an easy summer read. Three friends travel to Mexico together to work on their friendship. Two of them, Ashley and Natalie, have started a business together. Lauren has somehow stayed out. Either of them wanted to be Ashley’s closest friend. The girlfriends spend 5 days in Mexico. Ashley disappears on the last evening. The story is told alternating in flashbacks from the time the women land in Mexico and after the disappearance of Ashley. Each woman is taking turns to narrate. That sounds more confusing than it is.

As I said, at least the first half reads easy away. After some time, the quarrels that the women have with each other geta little exhausting and annoying. None of them is really sympathetic. They are all selfish and drama queens. They are constantly circling around the same problems they want to solve. But instead of decently talking, they prefer to drink alcohol constantly and somehow try to find answers spiritually in specific places. After a while it gets very exhausting. There are always the same discussions and the dialogues are not very varied. Until the middle I thought the book would be a solid 4 star read. But after finishing the book, I have to admit that it's pretty shallow. The thriller story takes a back seat to the small-scale war the girlfriends are leading. The girls were too selfish for me personally. It is always about the same topic for a long time but a real conversation never happens. Everyone wants to be the friends they used to be, but they are too bitchy to admit that. The twist at the end was not much of a surprise. The thing with the memory loss is already quite transparent.

The book is easily read, but without any depth and full of zigzagging and drama. From the middle I lost a bit of interest, because actually not much happens and also surprises are missing. It is mainly all about the dynamics within the friendship of the three women.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a fun story of friendship. However, I did not connect well with the characters. Many of their choices were questionable which made the story less enjoyable. I think the author pushes some things too far.

I especially did not like the ending. I got very dark and depressing. Characters that I liked turned unlikable.

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Girls' Night Out was a likeable thriller, if you like thrillers. I want to like them, I'm always so eager to read another because I think "this one sounds so good, I'm going to love it," but then I don't.

My main problem with GNO was how repetitive 3/4 of the book was: why the three girls were mad at each other, were they going to be able to get past it, would they sell their company...over and over. I, of course, wanted to finish to find out what happens but that's really only the reason I finished.

I can't even begin to imagine how difficult and time consuming writing a book is that I sometimes have a hard time writing less than stellar reviews but then I think that I'm entitled to my opinion 🤷

Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke have done it again. Written a multi-layered book about female friendship and the depths of those bonds. Lauren, Ashley and Natalie have been friends for 20 years and like most of us their friendship has weathered storms — highs and lows. Currently it’s in a low spot, so the friends decide to reconnect on a trip to Mexico. Something goes horribly wrong — Ashley disappears. As the friends and the police race to piece together the circumstances around Ashley’s disappearance, secrets bubble to the surface.

Girls Night Out brilliantly examines the complex nature of our friendships and the lengths we go to for those people.

Highly recommend.

I will say at the start of this review that I did not finish Girls’ Night Out and this review will include the reasons why I finally quit, at 69%, first and then my thoughts on the plot as a whole. If you don’t want to read possible spoilers or criticisms of the book, do stop reading here. You have been warned.

There are three primary reasons I tossed my Kindle aside, albeit carefully because that thing is precious, and said “that’s enough” in a defeated voice, defeated because I’ve recently resolved to DNF far less often and finish all my ARCs and this book forced me to DNF and leave an ARC unfinished.

First, and foremost, I don’t connect to these people – Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren (who are 39, not 40 as they do like to remind the read) – at all. Not even remotely. Hence the reason I categorized this book under ‘Rich People Problems’, and I am not rich and would not want to be rich if it made me act like Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren.

Second, Natalie’s slavish devotion to Ashley and Ashley’s gut, never wanting to question her on matters of business or true friendship and Ashley’s power trips of control over her friends are not examples of healthy female friendships. They hurt to watch unfold.

And third, this novel is rife with the ‘Ugly American’ trope. Maybe it’s not a trope, strictly speaking, but I can’t abide by books about American travellers who are arrogant, demeaning, and thoughtless toward the places they visit for the sake of a juicy plot. There are far too many exclamations in this book that boil down to “wow, Mexican cops aren’t all corrupt and they even know how to dust an apartment for fingerprints! Who knew! Not me!” At one point, someone (Ashley, maybe?) remarks on how the poor people selling their wares in the streets in front of their shacks seem ‘so happy despite the poverty’ and, while I realize that’s probably meant to illustrate how deeply unhappy these three women are, it made my skin crawl.

Girls’ Night Out is very ‘plot of the moment’, it seems. Right down to the cover design, the font, and using ‘girls’ to describe female characters (who inevitably misplace one of themselves) who are very much ‘women’ instead of girls. For the sake of suspense, I suppose, the story does seem to start in the middle, leaking out tiny bits of background as the plot crawls along. Back-and-forth chapters, in both narrative perspective and timeline, make the plot hard enough to follow as it is, without having back-back scenes randomly in both present and past chapters.

Abuse is a prevalent theme in the book, so if that’s a trigger for you, take a hard pass here. Lauren is physically abused by her husband, Ashley is emotionally manipulative toward her husband and her friend/business partner, and Natalie seems fairly okay with being used and abused by everyone.

Just… no, this book was definitely not for me.

(I received a copy of Girls’ Night Out through NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest and original review. All thoughts are my own.)

I'm a huge fan of Liz and Lisa's books, and loved that they moved into the suspense/thriller genre with The Good Widow last year--it was one of my favorites of 2017. I was so excited to read Girls' Night Out. The story did start out a bit slow for me but once I was hooked I couldn't stop. The book rotated time and perspectives, but was well done and not confusing. The chapters switched between the morning after they discovered Ashley was missing, then back to the beginning of the trip, and so on until the night she went missing, each chapter giving you a few more clues and details about the girls' strained relationships. These ladies had some pretty serious issues, and these issues come out in full force throughout the book. There were some pretty shocking endings to chapters that definitely keep you reading all the way to the end. I won't give any spoilers here--I have more to say but can't say without giving away the ending! The suspense of finding out what really happened takes you all the way up to the very end.

The setting--Tulum, in Mexico--is vividly described in the book. I could almost taste the margaritas and hear the waves. I wanted to be reading this one on the beach!


Liz and Lisa, lifelong best friends themselves, are an amazing writing team. I can't imagine the difficulty of writing a book with another person--blending your writing styles, making everything flow--and they do it with ease. I highly recommend all their books, but their most recent efforts have been their best. I think I liked The Good Widow a little more but only because it was set in Maui, and I absolutely love Hawaii--but both books are fantastic. Definitely add Girls' Night out to your late summer TBR!

I enjoyed reading this book. I liked the format and writing style. The suspense was very good.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review.

Three estranged friends go on a vacation to Tulum, Mexico to try to repair their damaged friendship.  When one of them goes missing on their girls’ night out, the other two must try to patch together their fragmented memories of what happened that night to find out what really happened to her...

This is a character-driven story about three insufferable, self-centered, and unrelatable women.  It’s nice to read a book about three professional women, but they are each more selfish and unlikable than the last. The secrets they’re “hiding” (at least, according to the description of the book), barely keep the plot moving forward. There’s a lot of dialogue, with a lot of roundabout conversations that don’t end up anywhere.  I don’t particularly understand why they’re friends, or even why they’re attempting to repair their relationship.  The three “girls” (women who are pushing forty—but I guess the book had to profit off the word “girl” being in the title) don’t ever learn from their mistakes. They have no empathy for one another, even though they’re all going through similar experiences in their lives.

Fenton and Steinke effectively implement a dual timeline in this story.  By jumping forward in time, we get to see the panic that Natalie and Lauren feel when Ashley goes missing.  The past timeline provides us with the days leading up to her disappearance, providing clues as to what truly happened to her.

I didn't like any of the characters. I almost felt for Ashley, but she invites her estranged friends on a trip and then spends most of her time with a man she’s just met—even though she’s married.  Her marriage is on the rocks – which makes this almost justifiable, but not when she’s supposed to be out with the girls.  She’s just as selfish as the other two, but I say I almost felt for her because she was the only one who seemed to actually want to work on the friendship, despite not actually putting any effort into it.

This book is chock-full of introspection. It felt like over half the book is the characters thinking about their children, their families, their work, their hatred of one another… There is very little suspense in the story until 73% into it, and even at that point, the plot is so slow moving that hardly anything happens. Fenton and Steinke do include several red herrings throughout the novel, which is appreciated, and there’s a mildly surprising twist at the end of the story.  I say it’s mildly surprising because I was expecting something more thrilling to happen, and the lacklustre conclusion was surprising given the high ratings of this book.

Told from the perspectives of all three characters, there isn’t a clear distinction in their voices.  A few times I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter I was reading to check whose POV I was on.  The writing style also leaves something to be desired. There aren’t any flowery descriptions or sardonic observations to grasp onto.

I feel like I’ve read this book before. This book is 90% tropes (like the unreliable narrator, the inconvenient “amnesia”) and 10% Mayan pyramids (the scene where they’re illicitly climbing a pyramid is honestly the highlight of the book, until they start arguing nonsensically, of course).  I recommend this book to those who enjoy character-driven women's fiction, not those who want a suspenseful psychological thriller.

Wow, the pace of this book is spectacular. I basically read the book in two sittings. I really enjoyed the way the timeline is shared, from all three points of view and both before and after "the night". I was interested in the storyline from beginning to end. I really liked seeing each woman's insight into their trip and their own personal lives. I got to know each woman individually and seeing them interact together brought depth to the story.

This story is also interesting because it balances the private lives of each woman with the mystery of Ashley going missing. I enjoyed seeing how Natalie, Lauren, and Ashley were dealing with their lives, what they expected to get out of their girls' trip, and the tension that resulted from Ashley disappearing. I really liked seeing each inner conflict and how it could have played into the mystery and investigation.

All three plot lines were organized well and revealed in a way that helped them connect, overlap, and build to tell one great story. The mystery itself was well done. I had my theories as to what happened and why, but I couldn't guess the ending. There were good twists and it was revealing through the end. 

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories about female friendships, professional women, and vacation mysteries. There's a good balance of women's fiction and suspense mystery with a great pay off and fast pacing.

“There was something both eerie and beautiful about this place-as if it could save you or break you depending on what you wanted from it.”

Happy book birthday to Girls’ Night Out! I actually set my alarm for a bit earlier than normal today to finish reading this before work! Girls’ Night Out follows 3 friends who are on vacation together at a resort in Mexico, trying to rekindle their friendship that has gone a bit awry in the past year or so, despite 20 years of friendship. While there, Ashley is swept away from the attention she receives from a local and doesn’t spend as much time focusing on her friends as she probably should. One day Natalie wakes up on the beach with no memory of how she got there and cannot find Ashley. Lauren went home early the night before and hasn’t seen her either. The next few days turns into a nightmare for them all while they try to find their missing friend while also dealing with the Mexican police (who just so happens to have taken their passports so that they cooperate in the investigation). The story is told from the perspective of the 3 women in alternating timelines. By the end, we know why they each had some drama with the other friends and what happened with Ashley.

While reading this book, I thought of my own friend group (of 4, not 3), where one recently got married at a beach resort in Mexico (although we are not estranged ;-))! I felt like the book did a great job explaining the struggles with tourism there, while also showing how hospitable the locals are. I enjoyed reading the authors’ note to see how they researched this location and what drew them to writing this plot. This mystery hits shelves today!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy of this book. All views are my own!