Thoughts this was a fun book with a lot of twists and turns I didn’t see coming! Definitely a book I’ll recommend to others!

Juicy, sharp-edged and suspenseful thriller. This is an easy, page-turning murder mystery.

Yes, this is the female version of The Hangover, but with murder mystery party vibes. The tension of distrustful women stuck together somewhere beautiful and remote, feels like knives hanging in the air, and I love it. Despite it's seemingly superficial beginning, and simplistic plot, I was smitten with the plot drama and suspense right until the end.

Plot: June Moody is a 38 year old professor, and life adventurer, who takes a hesitant trip to a friends reunion on their stunning lakeside property. The hostess, Sadie, is polished and successful after all these long years, but yields a controlling perfectionism which suffocates those closest to her. She's also a close rival to June. There's June's best friend and trusted confidant, Em; the surly and wild child personality, Kimiko; the pregnant and timid cousin of Sadie's, Amy; Sadie's husband Ethan; their teen daughter, Dakota; and the dreamy hermit groundskeeper, Leo. There's also romantic history between June and Sadie's husband, Ethan, just to spice things up. So, after a night of drunken celebrations, everybody wakes up to a horrific bloodstained sight, strange snippets of memories, and Sadie is missing. The panic and hangover amnesia creates a crackling air of suspicion, as all characters are likely candidates with their pre-existing friction with Sadie. As memories are pieced together, and new evidence emerging every step of the way, the uneasy atmosphere and clever dialogues will have you wrapped up in their spooky world until the end.

There's honestly not much I didn't like here, which says a lot considering many ARC reviews I read tend to waver on the boring or need editing side. So, if you're looking for a super easy weekend or holiday read, this hits all the spots. There's even a bit of raunchy that I found myself smugly smiling to. There's goss, posh, complex relationship dynamics, strong character development, cute friendships, those cutthroat intimidating telepathic exchanges between women's body language that sent delightful chills down my spine. There's amateur sleuth investigation, pristine relaxing views (of the imagination), and that foreboding feeling throughout. This is told in June's POV only, and I think that was a good choice to keep mystery breathing naturally.

Ways to improve: I think the plot was a liiiiittle too convenient for a happy ending, but sweet nonetheless. Perhaps more time spent on this specific relationship dynamic could have made it felt less cliché. I would also maybe double check some of the forensic processes, which questioned the believability of the narrative. Such as, are Sadie's guests all allowed to still stay on the property and walk around freely, even though its a crime scene? (I tried to research this right now but it seems to depend on the nature of crime/type of evidence available, so my bad if people are allowed to stay in a house with a big blood smeared wall!). Blood tests could have also been done to confirm the ladies early suspicions about what they ingested, but maybe this plot hole was conveniently avoided to suit the narrative for longer.


Thank you to Netgalley, Jody Gehrman and Crooked Lane Books for gifting this advanced digital review copy. Opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Not my favorite but I liked it enough to finish it. Girls weekends are always something I long for but you know from the beginning trouble is going to happen.

This started off as a really interesting book. My favourite type of mystery thrillers are books where a cast of characters are brought together, preferably in an isolated location, one of them dies and everyone's a suspect, a la And Then There Were None. So immediately I was into this.

It was definitely a good mystery and I loved exploring the different characters and seeing how they really felt about each other.

So if I loved this book so much, why is it only 3 stars I hear you ask? The ending. The reveal. Meh. I hated the conclusion and thought it didn't make a ton of sense. Just did not like it at all.

This was my first book by Jody Gehrman and I liked it!!! The story is about friends coming together and then the story takes a twist!!! Interesting thriller!!! Read and enjoy!!!

3 Stars!

This book started off like gangbusters for me....but, unfortunately, it fell a bit flat.

The writing style is so much fun! I love the voice the author gave to the characters. You loved to hate Sadie and her crew. I wanted to feel more of all the characters idiosyncrasies and less of them trying to figure out what happened. I feel like that's what made the story drag on for me and the big reveal felt lame.

A special thank you to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Jody Gehrman for providing me with an ARC.

Four stars for the broody atmosphere, two stars for the actual plot and characters. Unlikeable, bland, and cheesy.

EXCERPT: The rest of the night is a series of blurred snapshots: the feel of someone's warm lips closing over mine. Hands in my hair. Golden light all around us.

There are large black patches where everything goes dark. I can see myself sitting on a beach. The stars pulse with clear silver joy; I can feel their happiness coursing through my body. There's cold sand beneath my toes. Somebody is braiding my hair.

A scream, high and sharp, full of panic; my throat aches as I realise it's coming from me.

These are the fragments I'm left with - shards of sensation, broken and scattered. I'm aware only of the gaps, the dark places where my memories crouch, unwilling to be coaxed into the light.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie--and her husband, June's former crush--but agrees to go.

The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone's a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie's husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.

MY THOUGHTS: Brooding? No. Atmospheric? No. Suspenseful? Mildly, in parts. Interesting like a carwreck? Yes.

I really didn't like this book, but I just had to keep reading it, although I must admit to doing a fair bit of skimming around halfway.

The characters are just awful. Obnoxious. Self obsessed. Insecure. Jealous of one another. People you love to hate. I felt like I was reading about teenagers rather than a group of supposedly mature women. Bitchy. Manipulative. Sulky. Drama queens. They do not like or trust one another. Why would they want to spend a weekend together? I would rather have run to the other side of the world than spend a weekend with this lot.

The missing, presumed murdered woman, Sadie, is the hostess. Outwardly successful, her life is crumbling around her. She is a control freak. Her daughter is leaving home, her marriage falling apart. Her life is becoming a series of tangled knots of angst as those whose lives she has controlled are wriggling free. So why has she chosen now to bring her 'friends' together?

A quick, okay, but not great, read. Far too much dialogue. But that ending? . . . That made the whole read almost worthwhile and bumped up my rating a few points.

⭐⭐⭐.4

#TheGirlsWeekend #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Crooked Lane Books via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Girls Weekend by Jody Gehrman for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

When I first heard about girls weekend, I was very excited about a closed circuit mystery. I didn’t love this book but I did enjoy it. I really enjoyed the uniqueness of every character and how the police were not heavily involved with the plot. It was more of a story about these characters surviving a chaotic night and not remembering it. I liked how they had to solve the clues all by themselves but I did not enjoy the drama aspect. It felt like a soap opera and that is something I do not enjoy. It definitely took away from the experience of reading the story. I recommend this book for anyone who likes dramatic and social politics within friend groups. It was just not for me.

I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.

Mother of christ I love me some murder.
Erm, I mean I love me some murder MYSTERIES. Forgot a word there.
A remote location, a locked room, the metallic scent of blood.
The mismatched not so friendly grouping of people who seemingly come together under duress. The settings change, the victim(s), the weaponry but the outcome remains the same.
Somebody will die.
And often than not dear reader it is up to us to deduce whodunnit.
Sometimes it's totally obvi but if you're me it's definitely not. Even if the facts are screaming in your dumbfounded face.
But it's still totally worth it.
The girls are together again for a reunion of a lifetime. Five college friends reunited under the beautiful MANSION of their now successful author friend, think JK Rowling without the transphobia.
It hasn't been so easy for June Moody as of late. She just broke up with her trifling boyfriend and life has been passing her a series of Ls like popcorn. She wasn't intending on going to the reunion/baby shower. There's a lot of memories. A lot of feelings.
It starts off well enough but the tension is there and of course when the drinks start to spill so does the long bottled drama and the blood is fresh and vivid the following morning.
The host is missing and everybody is a suspect. Everybody. From the long suffering husband to the victim's heavily pregnant sister.
Fresh blood in the morning light...It brings tears to one's eyes.

This was a fun book. It's kind of ridiculous and whacky in its conception. At points I felt that it tried too hard to seem serious and thought that it would have done so much better in being relaxed, maybe having some playful banter within itself.

Point blank, I didn't like any of the characters. Not a one. So I truly didn't care who had done it. I just have an obsessive personality and needed to know the who and the WHY.

The writing is good and the read is fairly quick. I just felt that this was a mediocre murder mystery with a mediocre twist at the end.

I did enjoy the atmosphere very much though and certain parts had me engrossed. This is a qood read if you want something fast and fun and not as heavy.

Thanks very much to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Decent suspenseful thriller. I enjoyed the premise of a girls' weekend filled with secrets. One of the group turns up missing and everyone appears to have been drugged and can't remember the night before.
This is overall a fairly straightforward story, it's not difficult to figure out the culprit but the uncovering of the reason why and the ferreting out of the secrets everyone is hiding is a fun ride, if not terribly compelling then at least it's entertaining.
If you have read any of my reviews you know I'm not a fan of insta-love, and that appears in this book in all of its glory. I liked June as a first-person narrator, but I didn't buy into the relationship with Leo so that part of the story was just an eye-roller. Adding to this, I wasn't a huge fan of the caricatured women ("mental illness" "racially diverse") and the fact that these women were pretty far out of college but seemed like the had barely just graduated for as immature as they all were and acted.
Pretty fast-paced for the most part and a decent diversion from the world today. I perversely enjoy watching other people fall apart so I don't have to focus on the realities of life.

This book is about five college friends who reunite for a weekend before one of the girls gives birth.
After a night of drinking that no one can clearly remember one of them goes missing. Everyone is a suspect and only the killer knows what happened.
I enjoyed this book, although I found it a bit unbelievable at times.
The ending was unexpected and surprising.

I picked this one up based on the blurb. It sounded a bit like a Ruth Ware book I've read and enjoyed, so I definitely wanted to give this one a shot.

One of the things I liked most about this book was the way all of the characters start to turn on one another. The level of intrigue and suspicion was high, which made me keep reading. I also thought the ending was well done and the reveal was very interesting. I didn't expect the "whodunnit"!

I do recommend this book for those who like a good suspenseful read.

I listened to the audiobook for this one and really enjoyed it! It definitely gave me Big Summer vibes as it had a very similar storyline to it. I did not guess the second twist at the end (can't say anything further without spoiling it). I really think this one is underrated because I enjoyed it way more than I anticipated too and maybe it's because I went in with low expectations but honestly I'm glad for that.

The Girls Weekend is an intriguing thriller full of mystery.
While I found some part predictable, I absolutely adored this book!
All the characters were on the shady side and I definitely suspected them all at some point.

Highly recommend if you are a lover of thrillers & mysteries!

This was a good idea in theory, but I feel like the plot has been overdone recently. It seemed too similar to The Guest List or The Hunting Party, which I know the author was compared to the author of those.

A college reunion like never before was this when 5 women met up for a weekend, and one disappeared after a night of debauchery. But everyone had patchy memory. Were they perhaps drugged?

My first book by author Jody Gehrman, the writing portrayed honest emotions. I too felt the same with my college friends: nostalgia, jealousy, friendship, caring. Their past brought a flavor to the present. I was most curious to see how they would react when opportunity revealed itself.

The characters were different, and most had their own problems. Survival during a crisis was well shown when they turned on each other. It felt to be quite gossipy. Some parts were worth being on the TV series. Is Netflix listening?

Then there was a tiny niggle; I would have been happier if their memories of the night were better linked to the friend’s disappearance and if I were shown a clearer sequence. More suspense would have been always welcome. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the mystery in the plot.

The story kept its pace steady, and my interest turned a dial higher with each chapter. I should have easily guessed the ending, but alas… I was too embroiled in the story. I must say that I had fun times with the book.

The Girls Weekend was a fun if somewhat predictable thriller. It's full of drama, both past and present, and it's always fun to watch characters just making a mess of things over and over again. It does reach a point, however, where you start to wish these women could be just a little less dumb. It's still enjoyable, just a little frustrating by the end of the book.

Five college friends get together after many years apart. One of the girls disappears. What happened to her, and who is responsible?

Enjoy this fast paced thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end!

This was a great book, I couldn’t put it down! I will definitely recommend this book to others!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book had me aching for a girls trip amidst all of the quarantining that has been necessary - yes, even with what happened on the trip in this book. Some of the twists were guessable, but I still enjoyed this one.