Reminiscent of In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. It’s addictive and certainly entertaining. The characters quickly pull you in to their drama and you become enthralled in their story.

This was a fast paced read with an interesting premise. I had a bit of trouble with the characters, they didn't really hold up all that well. I had a hard time believing educated women of their age would think and behave the way they did in this story.

Who doesn't love a good book about a girls getaway? You just know something is going to go wrong! And there's a lot going wrong on this weekend as each woman has secrets, jealousies, and grudges that all come to a head when they get together. There's a beautiful beach house, a murder, a "love" triangle, and so much more! I loved it!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley, Jody Gehrman and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC.

I loved this book! It's got the right amount of suspense and excitement. This one had me guessing until the big reveal. Excellent book. I will definitely be reading more by Jody Gehrman!

This is marketed for fans of Ruth Ware and I can definitely see the connection. Personally, I enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed a Ruth Ware book.

The formatting was a bit off but I put that down to the download rather than anything else and after awhile you don’t really notice.

I liked the pacing of the plot. I didn’t find myself getting bored and annoyed with lulls in the story line. The characters were intriguing and the twists were enough for me.

I did guess the main plot but there were some side story lines that definitely threw me.

Overall I really enjoyed this book!

The mystery aspect was definitely alive in this book....a classic story of who-dunnit, where it literally could have been anyone. All the players seemed to despise the victim, and it kept me guessing til the end. Quick, easy read (I read it in one sitting!).

The premise of The Girls Weekend sounded right up my alley, but it did not live up to my expectations. I couldn't connect with the characters and that's important to me in order to like a book. I finished the book to see if I had correctly predicted the killer and I did. The writing was decent, but the pacing could have been better.

"How well do we really know the people close to us?" may be the most common theme in psychological suspense. In The Girls Weekend, Jody Gehrman plays it expertly five times over, then expands the circle of suspicion to additional characters. Five college friends, now in their 30s, reunite for a "girls' weekend" at the lavish home of Sadie, the group's bossy, irritating queen bee who has found worldwide success by writing children's books about her own daughter. June, the narrator, has remained close to only one of the others, and unpleasant memories make her reluctant to attend the gathering. Sadie's husband, Ethan, was June's boyfriend in college,. and he proposed to June, who turned him down, before moving on to Sadie in search of a wife who could get him a green card that would let him stay in the US. Once the group is assembled at Sadie's mansion, all of June's misgivings prove to be well-founded. When Sadie disappears, everyone is a suspect, not only in the eyes of the police but to all the other guests. This is a well-plotted tale with vividly drawn characters and enough sudden turns to keep the suspense level high to the end. Highly recommended.

A group of college friends reunite after many years at one of the women’s estates for a getaway weekend together. This should be a great weekend to reconnect and celebrating one friend’s pregnancy. After getting reacquainted, some old grudges start to resurface. Not enough to deter the women from letting loose and having fun, until they wake up one morning to realize one of the friends is missing and the house seems to be in disarray. The remaining friends try to piece things from the night before together, but realize they cannot remember anything. What happened? Was there an attacker? Was it one of them? Now the time is ticking, and they need to figure out what happened, and who was to blame.

The description of this book enticed me. The set up seemed like an excellent thriller, whodunit. Not to forget to mention how cool this cover looks. I just had to read it. For me, this book started slow and I struggled to connect with the characters and really get into it. The pace picked up throughout the second half, and I enjoyed the story enough, but I think my expectations and reality clashed a bit. I’d hope that other readers could get into this story, that it could be the thriller I had anticipated it to be. It just wasn’t the book for me.

Thank you to @NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The Girls Weekend was a fun, short read. Although I found parts of the book to be overly simplistic (June’s internal dialogue was too straight forward and helped the plot more along too generously), it was a hit in my specific genre of choice: “Agatha Christie-style group of folks in a strange location, who can we trust?” I’d recommend it for a fun and fast read, but not if you’re looking for substance.

Wow. This book wasn't at all what I expected. I read it in one sitting. The author has a very unique writing style. It kept me on my toes, and was so fast paced, almost frantic. Which is how anyone would feel in the situation they were in. Kudos.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC.

Top marks on the cover. The book itself had me hooked from the off. It started and the pace was fast from the off. I couldn’t put it down. It was well written and flowed well. It was a fantastic read

Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Girls Weekend.

I was excited when my request was approved because I'm always interested in a mystery with multiple suspects.

Unfortunately, The Girls Weekend failed to capture my interest.

First, all of the characters were unlikable; each individual had serious issues that made it really hard to understand how they all could have been friends in the first place.

June was a whiner, Kimi had a chip on her shoulder, Em had secrets (who doesn't?), Sadie was a narcissist, Amy had a legitimate mental illness; I can't see how any of these women could bond and get along.

Also, I found it REALLY hard to believe June would go see a frenemy she hasn't seen in a decade, just because her boyfriend broke up with her and rather than wallowing, she'd rather haul ass and go see someone she's got serious beef with.

The women are in their late 30s but no one possesses any ounce of maturity or competence you would expect; perhaps when old friends get together, they regress to an adolescent stage, like when they first met decades ago. Okay, I can get on board that, but still, a part of me didn't feel anyone was capable enough to figure out what was going on.

The writing is decent, but the Lifetime ending and the suspension of disbelief it took to believe June and her friends were 'legit friends' made this an okay read, but not great.

The Girls Weekend is a well paced thriller, that I enjoyed immensely. I admit at the start I struggled to like the extremely flawed protagonist, June Moody as she seemed to make terrible decision after terrible decision, but by the end of the book she grew on me. It is nice to see a little bit of character growth even within such a short book.

This book is full of suspicious characters, and left me guessing who-dun-it through all of the twists and turns to the big reveal at the end.

Great book for those who like a fast-paced page turner.

A fast paced thriller that was very entertaining. I really enjoyed the complexity of the friendships between the women.

I'm waffling between a 4 & a 5, so maybe call this a solid 4.5? I really loved it. I was sucked in immediately by the JUICY interpersonal conflicts, and "trapped in a place where a murder happens" is one of my FAVORITE thriller tropes, and this one did not disappoint. Though this one is "trapped in a place and someone disappears and there is blood on the wall and everyone blacked out and doesn't know what happened" but CLOSE ENOUGH.

The Girls Weekend plays on the complicated and sometimes toxic aspects of intense female friendship, especially the type that was bright and intense when you were younger and has now faded. The 5 women reuniting for the weekend were besties in college but now they're almost 40 and life has taken them in all sorts of interesting directions. The queen bee, Sadie, is now a megafamous children's series author with a mansion and the hot Scottish TA she and the main character June competed for way back when. June's also a failed novelist turned community college teacher whose boyfriend has just broken up with her via text, and man the FEELINGS in her POV were TOO REAL. Sadie's cousin Amy is pregnant, hence the reunion, and Em and Kimiko round out the group. Every single woman has some kind of backstory/beef/bitterness where Sadie is confirmed--so of course shit gets real when they all wake up and Sadie is gone and they can't remember anything. There's a lot of dysfunction brewing under the surface.

My favorite thing by far was all the interpersonal entanglements. The conflicts were really good--high stakes but interpersonal, so they felt grounded enough to feel real. The red herrings/tension were excellent because every single person on the estate/in the house that night had a motive to do something to Sadie. Things get VERY intense for poor June. The scene-setting at Sadie's mansion/in the PNW was sumptuous and vivid and perfect. I felt like I was there.

The end was a tiny tick guessable, but still wholly satisfying. If you also enjoy rich assholes trope, complicated female friendships trope, and the trapped in an isolated place where someone did a murder trope, this book should scratch all your itches, as it did mine. I happened to parse this out over about a week, but I could see it being a perfect page-turner--a plane or beach read.

I have never read anything by Jody Gehrman until this now, but I am hooked now! This was such a well written story that kept you guessing the whole time. The characters all play off of each other and keep you guessing the whole time. I read the whole book in one day! I am a Jody Gehrman fan forever now!

After Chandler Baker's The Whisper Network I had no idea I would find another fast paced novel full of strong female characters who I really wanted to root for so soon. The Girls Weekend follows the tradition of great remote house party thrillers and does not disappoint. So many novels lately are filled with flawed women who are desperately unlikeable, The Girls Weekend did not fall into that trap. The women involved are complex and interesting and I found myself liking most of them. (it didn't hurt that they're Gen-Xers who listened to all of the same music in college that I did!)

I found myself developing one theory after another and Jody Gehrman would take that theory, recognize it, and smash it all to pieces. The ending didn't shock me but it didn't feel contrived or implausible, I raced to it and never felt cheated.

Five stars. Enthusiastically.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and Jody Gehrman for allowing me to read an advance copy of The Girls Weekend in exchange for my honest review.

The Girls Weekend by Jody Gehrman is a quickly paced thriller with an entertaining story-line. I had only one problem with The Girls Weekend and that lay in the main character and narrator, June Moody; she’s just not a very likeable gal. At. All. Generally, when reading, I either empathize with a main character or at the very least, can see their point; investing me in their story or plight. I don’t have to love them to love the book. I had a hard time becoming mentally engaged with June; she was at turns weak and whiney and then strong and noble. Make no mistake, I love a flawed character but June just didn’t make sense to me. The other characters, primarily Em and Leo, I really enjoyed, they were well-developed and interesting.

I really liked the way this thriller played out. I had two suspects in mind at the beginning but as everyone’s back stories with Sadie played out, it seems more and more people had a reason to kill Sadie. There are plenty of smoke-screens that kept me guessing, plenty of twists to keep things interesting and a fast-moving plot which made for a page turner, despite my dislike for Jane (Ok, I’ll stop ragging on Jane).

This is a good book for any fan of the thriller/mystery/suspense genre.

A big thank you to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Jody Gehrman for providing me with The Girls Weekend in exchange for my honest review.

This book was just OK, as thrillers go. It centers around June, who joins her 4 college friends for a weekend in Western Washington after years of estrangement. The house belongs to Sadie, who was a "frenemy" of June's in college, so there is some initial discomfort in taking the trip. The weekend starts out with some foreshadowed conflict between the group, but the real mystery is that the women wake up the next morning to find Sadie gone, with the others having no memory of the previous night. The rest of the book is centered around trying to figure out where Sadie is and what happened.

The mystery part of the book was good- I suspected multiple characters throughout the story, only to be presented with new information that made me change my mind. The story itself is fast-paced.

What didn't work for me was the relationship between the characters, and particularly the lack of information around what made Sadie the villain. I didn't think the author did a good job of making the friendship between these 5 characters believable, or give the reader enough background to truly understand the dynamics between each member of the group. Furthermore, I didn;t find any of these characters all that likable, and often thought that they acted with less maturity than I would expect from women in their late 30's.

Though the book didn't really land for me, I did enjoy the mystery of the story. I found it to be a worthwhile read, but I don't feel that the story was that memorable overall.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.