Ahhh…yes…another morally grey main character. I didn’t know whether to keep reading in the hopes that she got her crap together or to scream at her through my kindle. Either way, I enjoyed the story line and the twists and turns but all in all it was just an okay read for me.

DNF at 12%

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Any quotes I use are from an unpublished copy and may not reflect the finished product.

Lost Girl: A Shelby Day Novel made me stabby. You know the people in horror movies that repeatedly make bad decisions? The people you just know are going to die? That's Shelby. She makes bad decision after bad decision, and her reasonings were ridiculous. If someone leaves a threatening note on your door after you "investigate" a murder, you flarking tell people about it!

"Jack didn’t need to know about the note. I wasn’t going to be scared into losing my lead story because of some creep, and I definitely didn’t need anyone’s protection. I could take care of myself just fine."

I'm also not sure why someone would leave her a vaguely threatening note for simply doing her job. Other news stations also reported on what happened, so Shelby being singled out didn't make sense. She wasn't a detective looking for clues, or a person that had access to the bodies. She was an investigative journalist that reported her findings based on interviews and some sleuthing. Why was she targetted??

"Fear was a waste of time."

No it's not! Fear is healthy. Fear is normal. Fear will likely keep you alive, because you're less inclined to do something stupid.

"...I typed in my phone and posted updates on Twitter and Instagram about our exclusive interview with Melissa Rossi’s ex-boyfriend."

I have no idea how investigative journaling works, but wouldn't you want to keep your "exclusive" interviews under wraps until they aired? Anything could happen... they could cancel the segment, or decide to go in a different direction, etc. Again, I have no idea how this works, but it seems like blasting it on social media immediately after the interview is unprofessional and has the potential to hurt the story itself.

Shelby is also a woman-hating, self-destructive psycho. She's always working, so she can "be the best" and get out of the town she's in. She wants to go home, make her dad proud, yada yada. I didn't read enough to understand what her reasons were. However, I was there for her belittling, hurtful comments, and her need to be seen by everyone. She wants to work hard so she can be on top, but gets frustrated when someone else does the same.

Example 1: "It was cheating. But Lily didn’t care about that, she was determined to make it to a big market faster than any of us. Her fake Colgate smile and relentless drive exacerbated my competitive side and worked my last nerve."

Example 2: "I envied Kaya’s carefree spirit. She wasn’t like the rest of us. She’d grown up in this charming small town with her loving, all-American, intact family. Her brother and sister had probably come with her parents to cheer her on when she played high school softball. I could imagine Kaya taking annual summer camping trips with her family and gathering in the living room each Christmas to eat popcorn and watch their favorite old movies. Her life seemed so intoxicatingly normal."

I just love how she tried to excuse her behavior.

"Covering those gruesome murders followed by a threatening note on my door and then a suspicious call to my work, had left me feeling cornered and vulnerable, and the alcohol wasn’t helping. The toxic combination made me mean."

She likes Jack, Jack likes her, but she refuses to acknowledge their shared feelings. She thinks emotions and a relationship will get in the way of her success, so she keeps him at a distance. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean she's mature about it. She gets jealous when other girls talk to him, and then tries to make herself feel better by making him jealous?? What is happening?? Is this high school?

More of Shelby being a dumbass: "In other breaking news, Melissa Rossi’s supposed best friend had called the station this afternoon. Despite any concerns regarding my personal safety, I was going to get another exclusive, my third in a row, a major coup in the news business."

Why is Shelby getting these interviews? What has she done to earn people's respect? Make out with a producer at a bar? Badger a police officer into commenting on camera? Stalk the ex-boyfriend of a victim for an interview? Secretly hate and publicly belittle her coworkers?

"Having said my own sloppy goodbyes and cursing out Jack under my breath for taking off with Kaya, I stumbled across Main Street feeling completely paranoid."

"He was the toughest guy I knew. The kind of man who made you feel safe at night. 'You’re worth the wait.' I held his gaze with a loopy grin as I sipped my wine. With Jack off doing who knew what with Kaya, I had no intention of going home alone."

Jack offered to walk Kaya home since it was late, dark, and two girls had recently been murdered. Also, I thought she wasn't afraid? What happened to "fear is a waste of time"? She talks big about being able to take care of herself, and then she's meeting a guy so she can feel safe (with the added bonus of potential revenge-sex). Revenge for what? Her friend Jack walking a coworker home?

I'm getting worked up just writing this review! Shelby is a horrible person and an unrelatable character. Her actions are ridiculous and vindictive, and she keeps really important and relevant information to herself. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Jack was the murderer. Everything else has been bananas so far, so that's my guess. Sorry it that spoils something for you, but I honestly have no idea who the killer is.

Originally posted at Do You Dog-ear? on December 30, 2019.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This was an ok read. Maybe I wasn't in the right mind space to enjoy it. The premise was intriguing.

This is going to be spoilery.

The best thing I have to say about this book is that it was easily read. But even if the mystery surprised me, I cannot give this story more than two stars. Because all of the big clues happen of page. The main character will simply Sau that she had talked to someone in between chapters and they gave her a big or important clue to further her investigation. This happen time and time again and it make me really disinterested in the story.

I didn’t like the main character. I feel like the author really wanted her to be independent, but it was like she couldn’t understand that other people had feelings too, and that she hurt them more than once.

The whole thing with Julien irked me. I know she wasn’t actual police, but when she slept with himx after interviewing him - about the murder of a girl she just learned was his girlfriend? It was too much, and then she’s surprised that she hurt Jacks feelings too.

I didn’t like this book very much, the characters were mostly awful and the plot didn’t feel cohesive, when there was so much happening off-page.

There is something about small town murder mysteries that draw me in. Because the main character in this book was so annoying and I unlikeable. If it wasn’t for me trying to see if I guessed the killer. I would have dnf’d it. I found the reveal very underwhelming. The romance was a mess. It was just a hot mess for me.
I really wanted to love it.

Hi, I lost the eARC of this book so I won't be able to review this book. I hope you understand. I really wanted to read it but unfortunately my phone got formatted and I lost the copy.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but the more I read the more I disliked it. DNF at 50% and I hate to DNF books so it was hard to put it aside.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title.

This book started out pretty good but I lost interest as it went along and ended up setting it aside.

This is a YA book which goes between romance and mystery.
Shelby is a budding young journalist and eager to make a name for herself. A double murder takes place in her town and she gets way too involved!

You will enjoy this if you like a modern twist! It has suspense, but also lots of heart warming moments.


I was given an advance of this book for review

***Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***

I wanted to like this, and the first half was great, but I lost interest and DNF.

I did finish, though it felt hard to at some points. I love mysteries, and even though it was a bit predictable (what mysteries aren't?), I enjoyed this book.

The character did seem older than YA, which was weird. Definitely could have categorized this as NA or adult. I don't think that YA is the best fit for it because the character is just not a young adult. Still, it was a good read.

I didn't like the main character, Shelby, at a lot of points. However, I think that's one of the reasons I liked the book as a whole. I love to read unlikable characters because to me it makes them SO real. We don't like everybody, and there are a lot of people with unlikable personalities, so I thought Shelby was just realistic.

The reporter investigating a crime story got me and I read the book. Also the mystery is kind of predictable at one point. But othere then that I loved the stories and the main character development through it.

Sometimes a story can be so interesting in the first hall, then quickly went downhill and become a pile of mess. Did not finish at 64% mark.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy!

Did not finish - I could not connect with the plot or writing so I decided to put it down.

I had a hard time getting into this. I thought I was going to love this, so this was really a disappointment. Other might like it but I just didn't.

If I could describe this book in one word it would be infuriating. It started off well enough, had the trajectory to hit three stars but it very quickly went downhill. I was tempted even to DNF this after the author started to throw in really problematic language but I was already almost halfway through so I decided I might as well finish it out.

As I said, it started off with promise. It read like a pretty typical mystery/crime novel but the first thing that struck me as odd was that this was listed as YA. This doesn't read like a YA, the characters may be younger but they're all post college. I'm not sure why the characters were aged the way they were, they were written in a very adult way and there's no way I would categorize this book as a YA ever.

Speaking of the characters, they were all infuriating in their own special way but the main character more so than anyone else. Shelby is incredibly self-centered and while the author tries to play it off as independence, it's really defiance. Her love interest, Jack, is so flat and their "romance" is rushed and painfully cringeworthy. I feel like this book would have played so much better to people who read more of a mass produced crime/mystery novel (I'm not sure how else to categorize it but this read like one of those crime novels that has 15+ books in a series which definitely have their own place but again this was marketed as YA so I'm reviewing it as such.)

I can't speak to the way the crime was handled but the murderer was obvious to me from the second he was introduced and there were just more and more random side characters thrown in to throw us off the track of that. This ended up leading to the story feeling jumbled and all over the place as it tried to fit a romance, a murder investigation, family drama, and more into one book.

Unfortunately, in the end, some problematic language is what is keeping me from rating this any higher than a one star. There were many comments about being Jewish and Native American that were really poorly handled and for that I would not recommend this book to anyone.

I tried several different times to try and get into this book and I just couldn't. I can see why people are going to like it but this one wasn't for me

I'd give this maybe a 2.5. Overall, it was not really that enjoyable. I was mostly interested in it because my sister's name is Shelby. I thought I'd give it a try based on the character's name alone. The bad part was that the character of Shelby was not really that likable or believable. She was irritating and immature. She made one bad decision after another and I just didn't quite get why the killer started threatening her so early on. I get she was trying to make a name for herself as a reporter by digging into the double murder, but her stories weren't even breaking news. She wasn't even really getting any info, yet the killer threatens her from the very beginning. It just wasn't believable. Why was she the threat and not the cops who were looking into the case. Maybe the killer hoped to scare her off before she found anything, but, shocker, it only made her want to dig more. The author did do a good job of providing lots of possible suspects which made you read until the reveal to know who it was. I partly think it was harder to know early on who the killer was because Shelby just didn't find very many real clues in all her probing. She got there in the end though. Overall, this book was just for me.

dived right into this book and was hanging on by a thread to see who was the killer and what else happened to other characters would recommend !!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Shelby is a young reporter who becomes a target of a killer during her coverage of the crime.