4.5 stars

This was a slow paced, suspenseful mystery thriller that I had a great time reading. Honestly, I was drawn to this book as it had a very similar synopsis as “Sadie” by Courtney Summers, and it was similar in ways that I loved while not feeling like a copycat. Having the dual timeline and having it be mostly from Anna’s perspective, who is a super unreliable narrator, was a great way to tell this story. I ate up every piece of information as presented and loved following the twisting road it took me down. I would’ve liked the podcast element to be a little more prominent, but other than that it was an awesome read. I will definitely reread this as an audiobook once it comes out as I’ve heard it will be full cast!

I'm a huge fan of Rebecca, so when I heard there was a YA retelling, I had to get my hands on it. While IKZS is not a literal retelling, the inspiration is clear and the parallels are really fun to follow. Manderley becomes Windermere. Red rhododendrons become pink azaleas. There's still a dog, a boat, a balcony, a party, a fire, an aloof rich boy harboring secrets, and a suspicious woman watching from a window, but Frick tells a much more web-like story, with several plot threads that weave in and out of each other, rather than following du Maurier's driving arc of a new wife trying to shed the ghost of her predecessor. We have a lot more characters to follow, any of whom could be considered a suspect. The tone is also significantly different, eschewing Gothic atmosphere for a more contemporary exploration of fact-finding. Said fact-finding proves challenging since every narrator here is unreliable. Frick even sets a tone of uncertainty for the reader by beginning in omniscient voice so we're unsure where the metaphorical camera is and whose point of view to grab onto. Though we see parts of the story through a young journalist's or police officer's eyes, every bit of information is subjective. It keeps us turning pages, as anxious to find out the truth as Anna and Martina are. It's an intriguing read with an incredibly complicated plot structure and a lot of interesting play with style. With the podcast forming one of the essential shifts of voice, I suspect this will really come to life in audio form.

I feel like this is going to be a trend with Kit Frick books and myself.  Read the synopsis, get super excited, rate it three stars.  Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but I've read two books by her now and keep thinking they'll be a five star for me and they just don't ever live up to my inner hyper. 

I Killed Zoe Spanos is a mystery/thriller that centers around a girl named Anna, who starts off the book confessing to police that she accidentally killed another girl, Zoe Spanos.  We then go back and forth through-out the book from the past to the present trying to sort out what really happened the night that Zoe Spanos was killed and how Anna fit into the equation at all. We meet all the typical likely suspects - the hot mysterious guy next door, the victim's friends and family and so on.  There are definitely enough characters to make you question people and trust no one - including our girl Anna.  That's right, we have an unreliable narrator on our hands.  Anna doesn't completely know what happened that night and has been having some really crazy visions that she can't explain.  I think the past and present POVs are done well - I never got confused or frustrated when it was switching back it forth, it was always very clear. 

I mostly enjoyed all the characters, they were as developed as they needed to be for a book like this and Anna was quite relatable.  I thought throwing little clues in with the little girl she was babysitting gave a nice little twist, it really put me on edge and had me wanting to shake the kid for more information.  My favorite though was the Zoe's sister's best friend Martina.  She has been trying to solve what happened to Zoe, who at the time was only missing, and starts a podcast on the topic.  This really breaks up the book and gives it a cool vibe - I loved the various interviews and evidence and "listening" to the podcast and trying to piece it all together.  I imagine this would probably be a fun audio book.  

My biggest issues near the end, it started getting messy and a little too convenient with how far fetched and crazy it got.  I don't mind if something is way out there, if it works and I just felt like this really didn't.  There were too many holes and characters that didn't say something when they clearly would have.  It just didn't add up.  I also figured out the "who done it" very fast - I won't go in-depth with that and many other reviewers said they didn't see it.  I didn't figure out the whole thing though, so there were a couple surprises that I appreciated.  

I would recommend this as a fun, summer thriller - it is a little long at over 400 pages but if you want something easy then this might work for you.

2.5

Why oh why do disappointing endings continue to plague me? This novel was engaging and interesting, but the ending was just Not Good in my opinion that it lost a couple of stars. Also the romance - if you can call it that? - is too quickly jumped into and added a layer to the story that I personally found unnecessary.

I also think there were some plot holes and some were a lot bigger than others. I won't discuss them here because it'll be too big of a spoiler, but to me it really turned me off giving this book a great rating.

The writing was fine, not immature at all, and the plot itself was interesting. I'm not a fan of podcasts so that wasn't really a pull for me, and it's the third book including podcasts that I've read in the last few months, so I found it a bit much.

Overall this was a quick and enjoyable read, if you don't think too much about the missing information.


Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to start off by saying thank you to @NetGalley and McElderry Books for giving me an advance copy of this book to review!

When Anna Cicconi moves to the Hamptons for the summer to take a nanny job she sees it as a new beginning. A way to start fresh before she moves away for college in the fall. But after only a few days there Anna learns about Zoe Spanos, a local girl who went missing on New Year’s Eve. Suddenly Anna starts having these weird flashes and memories of this town, like she had been here before…like she had been here with Zoe on New Year’s Eve. When Zoe’s body is found in a nearby lake Anna confesses and is charged with manslaughter, but things just aren’t adding up. Did Anna really kill Zoe, or does she just think she did?

I was pleasantly surprised with this book! I had never heard of it, or the author before but the synopsis sounded intriguing so I decided to pick it up, and when I did I could not put it down. The book has so many twists and turns, and I kept trying to get one step ahead and figure out what really happened to Zoe before the book told me but it was impossible. Frick did a great job of making sure this book was not predictable.

The only thing that kept me from giving it five stars was that the ending got a little too complicated for me. I felt there were just too many big reveals at the end that made it more complicated then it needed to be.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a summer mystery to read by the pool!

Though a bit slow to pull me in, this turned into a can't put down novel with some great twists! Loved the format bouncing back and forth between the months and the fact that there was more than 1 story going on without realizing it. Well done!

An ARC of this novel was sent to me by NetGalley for reviewing purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I am not a fan of this book- I found the pacing weird and the characters hard to relate to.

Anna Cicconi takes a summer job in the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills as a way of building a fresh start before starting school. She's tired of partying, drinking out of control, hooking up with boys she hardly remembers and blacking out. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl with who she bears an eerily resemblance. As Anna investigates the mystery, diving deeper and deeper, she becomes convinced her and Zoe are connected through their stories.

Two months later, Zoe's body is found and Anna is arrested for manslaughter, but her confession held too many holes. Budding journalist and "Missing Zoe" podcast host Martina Green is determined to uncover what really happened herself.

The story is told through multiple timelines, keeping the mystery alive. It's smart, engaging and one of the first psychological thrillers where I did not guess outcome before it was unraveled to me. I personally enjoyed reading the podcast transcripts. I can only imagine how an audiobook may improve the experience even further.

I struggled with the ending, there were a lot of loose strings trying to be tied into a perfect bow, but it left a couple knots instead. The amount of connections, memories and pieces coming together at once made the conclusion feel slightly rushed and confusing. I wish more time was taken to join everything together. That said, I Killed Zoe Spanos is well very written and will captivate YA thriller lovers this summer.

i don’t think i’ve read anything like this before, & i’m shocked because i usually don’t gravitate towards books with plots like this, but i liked it.

surprisingly, i liked the format. i liked how it would go from past to present with podcast transcripts included. i thought that was definitely original & it was done fairly well. i know this kind of format might be a little confusing to follow sometimes, but it works well with the storyline.

i feel like there was way too much going on in the end. it was just an endless sea of tying together all the pieces we’ve gathered throughout the entire book. i understand that the author wanted the reader to have some sort of conclusion or some type of way to combine the reasoning & memories of all the characters, but i found it to be way too much to take in. it felt rushed & some events just seemed like they were pulled out of nowhere.

personally i liked some characters, & didn’t like others, but i was able to recognize everyone’s purpose. i liked that even though there were a lot of characters they all had a purpose to move the plot along. i liked anna a lot, but i also felt really bad for her because she really went through a lot. it’s really hard to figure out what’s real when your mind is playing tricks on you. martina was cool too i really admired her dedication to trying to solve zoe spanos’ case through her podcast.

i would’ve liked if the book was a little more organized with the ideas & events that were incorporated because it seemed a little all over the place especially at the end. i would’ve liked if it flowed better, but for what it was it was enjoyable.

I’m absolutely obsessed with this book. I’ll be sure to recommend it to anyone I can get my hands on. It was wild from start to finish, having me biting my nails and flipping pages like no tomorrow!

What a really wonderfully interesting story! I am having a hard time pinning down a star rating for this as I have so many thoughts about it. It is a 3.75, I am thinking! ⚖️

The plot inspired by Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, I love it. I love that I love it! I love that, I love the map of the houses in the beginning of the book, I love a modern day Windermere. I love the whole premise!

The atmosphere had me completely enchanted, the eerie confusion that swept from page to page as Anna tried to figure out just what the heck was going on and why Zoe felt so familiar was a really well written tangled web! I enjoyed the confusion it brought of “wait just one moment!!”

I struggled a bit with the ending of this one, and I felt like the ultimate connections all coming together did so in a way that felt unsatisfying to the rest of the story. However, I do think so many people will love this overall, and I would like to not only reread it one day knowing how the story turns out, but keep an eye out for more work from this author, as I think Kit Frick is a great writer!

Thanks so much for a copy of this! It really was tons of fun!

An excellent thrilling and enticing read!
I loved diving into this one and couldn’t put it down. Kit Frick has a way with words and I can not wait to get my hands on a finished copy!!