This was a fantastic book. Such a well told story. I loved the characters and the psych of the MC. The story unfolded and had you wondering who was behind it.

DEFINITELY NOT MY LAST BOOK BY THIS AUTHOR

Amazing plot line! Love this story and our main character was very well written.

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Dead Girls Club tells the story of what happens when two young girls take a ghost story too far,
Heather and Becca have been telling, writing, and loving witch stories since they were young girls. Until their stories went too far and Becca ends up dead and Heather ends up dealing with the repercussions that seem to follow her years after. As she finds the answers she has been looking for, will they cost her too much?
Highly recommended! I couldn't put this down and found myself starting to believe in the red lady!

*Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

The premise of this book really spoke to me. Like these girls I was weirdly into true crime and urban legends at a young age, so I was very excited to read this one. The book started off a little slow for me, part of that was that I didn’t love Heather, and even at the end of the book she still sort of annoyed me, but I did understand her a little more.

At about a third of the way through the book really started to pick up and I wasn’t able to put it down after that. I really enjoyed the time switching between past and present, I was also reminded of how mean girls are, and it made me very glad I am an adult now. That being said, I think I actually preferred the story of the young girls to the that of Heather as an adult.

Overall the mystery was engaging, and I wanted to know who was behind all this as much as Heather as we got closer to the end. The ending was not what I expected at all, which I liked. Though I was a little unsatisfied.

**RECEIVED A DIGITAL ARC VIA NETGALLEY**

I really enjoyed 'The Dead Girls Club'. I loved the back and forth between past and present timelines and identified quite a bit with the main character. It's a book I'll be recommending to anyone who likes thrillers. I didn't love the ending, but the first chunk of the book really pulled me in and kept me engaged.

A fascinating thriller with a supernatural element, the Dead Girls Club kept me constantly guessing.

Over twenty years ago, Heather Cole stabbed her friend Becca, killing her. It wasn't just simple murder- Becca had convinced Heather that being killed was the only way Becca could gain the favor of the Red Lady, a ghostly figure who could supposedly grant wishes, in exchange for a life. Unfortunately, Becca didn't rise again after being stabbed... Or did she?

Heather is now an adult, living with her husband in a comfortable home and working as a therapist. Her life seems to be going relatively well until mysterious objects begin appearing on her personal property, all tied back to Becca. There's Becca's ribbon and drawings. There are the stories Heather and Becca wrote together, all memories of the Dead Girls Club they shared as children, fascinated with the gory and the scary.

It's an excellent look at the strange fascinations children often have. It seems macabre to have a group of preteens so intensely focused on serial killers, but Walters shows how that's often a normal part of growing up. It's when that fascination grows that someone should grow concerned.

The mystery of whether or not Becca has truly come back, if the Red Lady actually exists, that propels the book forward. Part of me knew it wasn't possible, but that sense of 'what if' always lingers, harkening back to the infamous Slenderman Case, or other incidents of mass hysteria, particularly about preteen to teenage girls. It's a timely look at the phenomena, and also at seeing how far a person will go to both maintain friendships and to get out of a bad situation.

Heather's growing hysteria makes her an unreliable narrator- deliciously so. Is Heather hallucinating, or is she seeing the truth?

Up until the very end, I was kept guessing. Without giving spoilers- I did find the ending disappointing. It wrapped up too suddenly and too neatly for my liking, given what a complicated situation it was. Still, it's well worth reading, especially as nights become long and chilly.

Thank you to Goodreads for providing me with the review copy!

The Dead Girls club was a twisty psychological thriller that kept me guessing until the end. The story jumps between the past and the present , weaving together a story about a group of young girls and the scary story that led them to a terrible act, and the present day where one of the girls is being stalked by an unknown assailant.
I was hooked on this story all the way to the end, and have to admit I didn't see the final twist coming.
A fun, easy-to- read thriller !

I really liked this one. It is impossible to figure out what is going on in this book (as in, you cannot guess the ending not that it's hard to follow. This is the story of a group of friends. Like most groups of tweens, they're dealing with normal stuff and they are obsessed with ghost stories (or true crime or anything else that might scare them a bit). One of the ghost stories becomes a little too real. Years later, the mother of the girl that died is out of prison and Heather is being plagued by a stalker. All of this is just a bit too much, so she decides to find out who is stalking her and what really happened to her friend. I swear I thought that this was going to be ruined with an impossible ending, but it wasn't, so I liked it. I definitely recommend this if you enjoy the genre.

Becca and Heather are best friends and with two other girls they have the Dead Girls Club. The girls discuss serial killers, and all other things spooky and scary. One summer, Becca begins telling the story of the Red Lady. A tale that revolves around a witch who makes people mysteriously die. The story goes between the past and present. Readers know that Becca dies, but how? Who did it? Why are there so many secrets? Heather is now a happily married child psychologist when packages start to arrive. Packages that are a blast from the past with details only Becca would know. Who is sending these things?

Overall, a very easy read. Equal parts witchy spooky, page turny, and held my interest. No major plot twists or major jaw dropping conclusion, but a nostalgic read. Who didn’t play light as a feather stiff as a board as kids? Who doesn’t fondly recall the memories with childhood friends? Recommend to anyone for a quick, fun read.

Special thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for the honest review.

"You never have friends like you do when you're a kid."

Child psychologist Heather Cole hasn't thought about her childhood friends in years until one day when she gets a necklace in the mail. It's one of those "BFF" necklace sets you can buy at Claire's, with each half coming together to form a heart. Nothing strange about it...except for the fact that she hasn't seen that necklace since her best friend Becca Thomas died while wearing it. As she keeps receiving mementos reminding her of Becca, Heather is forced to revisit what happened that summer when she was twelve: the story of the Red Lady, the Dead Girls Club, and, most importantly, what really happened to Becca.

We've all had a friend like Becca. Of course, I'm not talking about her eventual fate. You could never quite tell when she was telling the truth, she always pushed the fun a bit too far, and the pain and jealously that accompanied her decision that you were no longer her best friend were almost too much. Setting aside the creepy premise of this book, I thought that Damien Angelica Walters wrote about the melodrama being twelve and the complexities that accompany preteen friendships with startling accuracy. The emotions that twelve-year-old Heather felt towards Becca and the other members of the Dead Girls Club were very realistic. I seriously started thinking about my own middle school friends, even ones I hadn't thought about in ages! On a more serious note, though, this book is an interesting take on what we, especially as children, are willing to believe when we're desperate. I wondered if Becca had intentionally made up the story of the Red Lady to scare her friends or if she was simply so eager to escape a hopeless situation that she convinced even herself that it was all real.

I also thought the format of this book worked really well. The narration switched between "then"--the summer that Heather was twelve and Becca told the story of the Red Lady--and "now," which follows adult Heather's investigation into who keeps sending her Becca's belongings. I admit that I was a bit more interested in the "then" sections. I was intrigued by the story of the Red Lady, and I was anxious to learn more about Becca's death. In that respect, I thought the two timelines worked really well together. From the beginning of the book (and even from the book description, for that matter), it's no secret that Heather killed Becca. But the events of the "then" sections really start to call into question if that's actually what happened, I wasn't necessary expecting a huge twist from this book--to me, it got more of its suspense value in the fact that we knew what was going to happen, so the tension kept building every time the perspective shifted--but I was pretty surprised by the ending, especially the epilogue.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It was a fun, creepy read that made me introspective too!

3.5 stars rounded up.

The past does not always stay in the past, especially when you get away with murder. The main character, Heather, learns this the hard way, as her past comes back to haunt her in this suspenseful mystery novel.

As a child, Heather did something horrible in the hopes of helping her best friend, Becca, and no one ever found out. She grew up and life moved on, until she received an anonymous package with a half of her "best friends forever" necklace, that should never have been seen again. Heather spins from there, trying to find out who knows and in the process antagonizing everyone important to her, but she needs to find out who is tormenting her.

A wonderfully suspenseful novel, The Dead Girls Club, keeps you on the edge of your seat for much of the novel and looking twice at the shadow in the corner of your room. If you can get passed Heather's irritating personality and actions, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel.

<i>Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review</i>

<blockquote><b>"Hey, kid, childhood is a bitch and she leaves marks."</b></blockquote>

2.5/5 stars.

Heather murdered her best friend when she was only 12 years old. She told no one. Yet, someone is sending her things from the crime scene. Someone knows, and Heather is scared of the consequences.

This novel alternates between Then and Now. Young Heather is much more compelling and sympathetic than Old (Current) Heather.

This story is fun, but there were some things I couldn't let go of while reading.

<b>Things I Liked:</b>

- I was genuinely freaked out a few times while reading. Nothing was ever too scary to handle. Something everyone can enjoy, and just a perfect amount of it to keep you turning the page without having to put the book away in the freezer until you aren't scared anymore.

- The young friendships between the four girls was so cute and fun. I loved the Dead Girls Club, definitely something I would have enjoyed as a child.

<b>Things I Did NOT Like:</b>

- There are way too many references to the same outside sources. Macbeth, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Stephen King are mentioned entirely too many times. One mention of each of them would have been enough. Honestly, it would have been nice to draw similarities between King and this novel naturally and without it being forced upon me so many times. That totally ruined it for me, and made me think too much about the author trying to mimic a King-style novel.

- Old Heather is ridiculous! She makes <i>so many</i> bad decisions! Usually, I can excuse this away with the fact that it makes it more realistic but that just doesn't work here. The issues she creates with her husband, the insanely careless mistakes she makes while stalking her ex-friends. So stupid. Just seemed like a way to create more drama.

- The ending is not satisfying to me. I just feel as though this is an over-used plot device, and I don't need to see it ever again. It's supposed to be this crazy-didn't-see-it-coming twist, but I yawned.

- The ending also leaves a lot of things unresolved. She <i>kind of</i> wrapped things up with the husband, but it was NOT satisfying. Seemed like a lot of unnecessary drama to create without ever really giving the readers a solid ending. A wasted effort on both the writer's and reader's part. And what about Gia and Rachel??

And last but not least, the thing that absolutely <i>KILLED</i> me about this novel:

- <b>HOLY METAPHOR.</b> There are WAY too many metaphors in this novel, and I am shocked no one told the author to cut most of them out.

If there were less of them and more spread out throughout the story, they would have been way easier to read over or ignore without thinking too much about it but LORD. I don't see how anyone could make it through this writing without laughing at some of these.

There were so many, that eventually I started writing them down because they became so ridiculous I couldn't stop laughing. Here are some of my favorite examples:

"The lie is battery acid and sandpaper." -This is where I decided to start writing them down.

"The sky is gunmetal, air thick with the scent of the impending squall." - There were SO MANY different, yet very similar descriptions of the sky like this. This one was the most dramatic. I laughed a lot.

"Her face went blank, like someone took a squeegee and wiped it away." - Squeegee is such a ugly word, and it really felt awkward in this scene.

"My spine turns arctic, my mouth Saharan." - !!

"My heart is a tattoo gun." - This one was <b>SO BAD</b>, by far my absolute favorite one, though. I highly recommend this novel just so you can read the paragraph that this metaphor appears in. It makes <i>NO SENSE.</i>

"My heels tattooing panic on the vinyl tile." - Tattoo is not a word you should use more than once in a novel, especially so close together, unless the novel actually involves tattoos (this one does not).

If anything, you could read this novel just to see how many ridiculous similes and metaphors you can find. It's a fun enough read, just not winning any awards from me.

Heather is receiving strange gifts in the mail. But they are not unfamiliar and a memory of a childhood horror. The half heart necklace and drawings are a reminder of a time of deep friendship and devastation. And the bloody stumps of the urban myth of the Red Lady.

The Dead Girl's Club begins strong, sets the stage of childhood past and the present. The story comes together late and the ending that unfortunately was not memorable. The main character is well developed, showing a fractured relationship with her husband which lays the foundation for her breakdown. The husband is also very unforgiving which made him unlikable. What kept me reading the narrative was the development of the story of the Red Lady, an interesting urban legend that comes to life as the story was being told by bestie Becca. This story was creepy, disturbing and reminded me of "The Ring".

Overall, a 3-star reading. Thank you Netgalley, the author and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing style as well as the perspective from adulthood to childhood. The author was able to capture childhood so well I could visually see how terrible girls can be to each other.

The pace of the book went fast and I was drawn into the story questioning if The Red Lady was real or just a story.

I dropped a star off for the ending. The ending was odd and that's where I felt it was meh. Such a big build up for that.

I'll definitely read more books from this author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the author for providing a copy of this book to me.

The Dead Girls Club was one of the most fantastic books I've ever read. It was unlike most of what I've read before and it was amazing. Well written, unique, and gripping, you won't want to put this down.

Heather is a psychologist whose life is turned upside down when she receives a package that reveals something shocking from her past. Her childhood friend, Becca's necklace sits accusingly in Heather's hand, yet the last time she saw it was almost thirty years ago.....and it was around Becca's neck....when she killed her. Heather becomes more and more upset as she tries to find a logical explanation. Is Becca alive? Is the Red Lady real? Or does someone want Heather to pay for Becca's death?
The Dead Girls Club is full of twists, turns and makes you question Heather's version of events. Sections told in the past reveal what happened to Becca and in the present, we watch Heather unravel. This was a beach read for me and one that kept me turning pages until the end. A decent mystery, well-written characters, and I especially liked the creepy vibe of the Red Lady. I am looking forward to reading more by the author. If you like a little hint of the supernatural with your murder mystery, I would recommend this book.
I received a DRC from Crooked Lane Books through NetGalley.


My Review System:
5 stars – Absolutely loved everything about the book! It was unique or presented something differently, and I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.
4 stars – A really solid read that made me glad I read the book. Didn't keep me up all night or make me abandon my plans, but I would recommend it without hesitation.
3 stars – An ok read and I might try another book by the same author to see if their writing style is a good fit for me.
2 stars – The book just didn't work for me.
1 star – I have never read a 1-star book( yet, fingers crossed), but I would have to hate it to give it this rating.

<i>The Dead Girls Club</i> had me at the description. Four teenage girls, obsessed with the occult, serial killers and all the urban legends we can relate to from our childhoods. Becca, one of the 4, ends up dead, while trying to prove to the others that she had been contacted by a spirit.

Years later, Heather, Becca’s best friend is forced to confront her past, as little mementos begin to show up - in places where they shouldn’t. <i>The Dead Girls Club</i> Was interesting and told through the perspective of Heather’s present life and Heather’s past. The characters are well developed, but the plot twists are fairly benign and expected.

The Dead Girls Club is comprised of four twelve year-old girls obsessed by true crime and horror stories. Protagonist Heather is a big fan of the former, while her best friend Becca prefers gory horror. At one of their get-togethers, Becca tells the other three girls the story of The Red Lady, with whom she is obsessed. The other three are freaked out by Becca's tales, but soon it's the only topic that Becca wants to talk about when they're together. I found it easy to get into this book. Even many, many, many years later, I can still remember the days of sleepovers and Ouija Boards and ghost stories like it was yesterday.

In the present day, Heather, now a child psychologist, is still tormented by the death of her BFF Becca because, as we learn early on, she killed Becca! And now, someone is sending Heather messages about that long-ago murder, but who and why? I recommend reading The Dead Girls Club to find out for yourself.

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed The Dead Girls Club.

Overall this was a pretty decent thriller read. Maybe more suspense than thrill. The ending felt almost as if it was an afterthought or forced into working to fit this book, but it was a quick and fun read.

First off, let's be real: I AM HERE FOR THIS COVER AND TITLE. Actually, I'm here for the story, too, but man, the cover and title are what sucked me in and the rest held me hostage. I normally don't like books that jump between past and present. If done wrong, it can be so much work and so confusing. However, it worked beautifully in the book.

The Dead Girls Club is a heart-pounding thriller kept me on the edge of my seat. It's about Heather, one of four girls who used to be part of a small club that was obsessed with serial killings. One night, Heather's bestie talks about Lady Red -- and their whole lives derail at that point. Flash forward years later, and Heather is being sent little bits of the Red Lady (trinkets, hints, etc) anonymously and she's determined to uncover the truth before it destroys her carefully crafted existed.

I really liked this book because the tension -- the desperation, the suspense, the fear -- is palpable. It reminds me of Pretty Little Liars or Final Girls, and I love that sense that the source of all the anonymous grief being given could be around any corner....or right in front of Heather.