The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn.

Wow is all I can say! I was not expecting that ending at all! I absolutely loved all the characters and the way the story came together and weaved the most entertaining story I’ve read in a while

5 stars

This is an episodic account about college “mean girls” and the damage that ensues when their dirty tricks cause personal tragedy. The main character is one of those unlikeable girls. It was difficult to have much sympathy for Ambrosia as her jealousy and insecurity proved to be putty in the hands of the “meaner” girl, Sully.

The story alternates between the college years and ten years later at a college reunion. Someone knows what they did, and leaves messages warning Ambrosia and Sully of retribution.

Adult Ambrosia didn’t seem to have gained any more maturity or self-knowledge than she had in her college years, so it was tough to root for her. The dialog was repetitious, and the only motivation to keep reading was to learn who was out to get her. And, although that reveal wasn’t especially surprising, I did like the ending.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

After seeing I know what you did last Summer for the 13th time I wanted a book about revenge and hidden secrets. This book didn't disappoint and it kept me on the edge of my seat.

**Thank you Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC in exchange for my review**

Wow wow wow. I could not put this one down, I lost a few hours of sleep just to finish this book! This book is full of tension and unexpected twists. You'll definitely want to grab this once it hits shelves.

What could have been a typical "mean girls" story is really elevated by the author's tight prose. Not a word is wasted, and every scene is tense and suspenseful. The ending is also very satisfying. I highly recommend this book for lovers of murder stories and mysteries.

First, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book!

This book disappointed me. I love a good thriller and the premise of this book sounded fantastic, but I felt like it lacked tension and direction to the point where I found myself dreading picking it up.

I wasn’t a fan of the time jumps between chapters, it stalled the urgency that should have been pushing the plot forward and didn’t come together in the end the way I hoped it would.

The lack of interest I felt for the main characters didn’t help this either. It’s hard to root for horrible people when there is no grayness too them, I didn’t even find myself sympathizing with the person who thwarted our main characters in the end. All of the characters were incredibly 2D.

My holy grail thriller is Gone Girl, and I honestly thought this book would live up to that comp title — as I’ve seen it compared, but it just fell flat for me. I think people who enjoy domestic psychological thrillers will generally enjoy this, but for me it didn’t stand out from an already packed genre; especially with that ending, what on earth was that?

I very much expected to like this - several trusted readers have called it the next hot domestic thriller, the new Gone Girl, etc - unfortunately, I just didn't see it. The author does an excellent job of portraying the internal world of the mean girl - but the thing is, all the mean girl stuff in real life is profoundly boring to anybody not right in the middle of it. And so it's all pretty boring in the book. The "twist" was pretty predictable and the ending just kind of abrupt - and you can't register in a hotel under a fake name in this day and age. I'm sure some people will like this, but I found, for example, Foley's The Hunting Party to be a much more interesting version of something similar (although that one fell down in the third act, IMHO.)

I spent the whole book swearing to myself that I had read it before because it seemed so familiar. But that’s because there are a million and one books with the same premise and everything was starting to meld together in my brain.

Not saying this book wasn’t unique, I was honestly surprised at the ending and during the story I was rooting for Ann to change her ways and make everything right but that would be a fairytale and the author had a great understanding of personalities and how people interact with each other.

Another thing to note was how the rape scene was handled and how that played out in the book. I don’t think you can ever say a rape scene was tastefully done because that sounds awful but it was treated in such a way that you understood the emotions that were going through the girls and it wasn’t typical which helps give voices to women and men that have been something like that and are questioning what has been done to them.

I definitely get the hype surrounding this boo. It was a very satisfying read with interesting( but unlikable) characters. Thanks To NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for review.

4.5/5

You often hear that freshman year of college is the perfect time to reinvent yourself; you can be anyone you want. Ambrosia (Amb) took this advice to heart. She leaves behind Pennington, NJ with all its tight clothes, expanses of tanned skin, and tiny LV handbags for the ivied Wesleyan enclave. There she meets, and falls a little bit in love with, Sully. Sully is impossibly cool, and she does it all without seemingly trying.

This book takes us between freshman year and the reunion 10 years after graduation. An indescribable tragedy occurred freshman year, and both Sully and Amb are worried that someone knows what they’ve done. Letters, warnings, and whispers come fast and furious before the shocking conclusion that ends the reunion weekend (and some lives) for good.

This book is a decent read. It wasn’t super twisty, and it wasn’t intellectually challenging. A quick read.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I cannot believe that this was a debut novel- it definitely did not seem like one! I love a good story set in boarding schools, colleges or reunions so this hooked me from the beginning. The Girls Are All So Nice Here fits that bill and so much more. We follow Ambrosia in her 30's, who has received an invitation to her 10 year college reunion. There's something that makes her nervous to attend, however. As the story moves along, we travel back to the past during Ambrosia's freshman college year with her roommate, Flora, and the campus wild party girl, Sloane (Sully). We follow Ambrosia's choices, and her journey of coming into herself, growing into a young woman by the choices she makes and who she befriends. These choices end up having their consequences..not only not only in the past tense of the story, but also the present. This novel was a wild ride that took me on a vicious, crazy cycle of toxic friendships and lies. The final twist at the end, I would have never guessed. I look forward to more from this author!

Thank you so much to NetGalley for this advanced copy of the book!

This psychological thriller and women's fiction novel follows former best friends Ambrosia and Sloane (aka Amb and Sully) as some mysterious letter forces the two girls to reunite to find someone who wants to get revenge for some dark deed they did ten years ago at their college reunion. It starts with an intriguing, mysterious hook that has me so curious from the get-go that had me so interested to keep reading. This book flashes between the reunion in the present day and Amb's freshman year when the incident went down and what led to its occurrence. Once Amb and Sully get letters summoning their attendance at the reunion., they find out they've been stuck in the same room but who did that and is stalking them, or what do they want? This book has so many juicy bombshells and insane reveals that had me on the edge of my seat. It's so mysterious and I was just so desperate to find out more with all of its unexpected and unpredictable twists that gave me such can't-put-it-down vibes.

Then, that epilogue. Like, what the heck it seriously had the biggest twist of them all and I just wanted to scream at where these characters ended up because I didn't see any of that happening. But wow, that's a pretty damn good mystery novel then. I mean, as a non-mystery fan like just holy freaking hell, I can't believe all that went down which is so surprising, and also the language was just so captivating.

This book grabbed me from Chapter 1 and kept me through the end. Even better, the ending was not what I expected. Interesting look at the psychology of bullying.

This was a difficult book to read. I literally hated the two main characters. This took mean girls to a new level. We have all known females like this but to be in a dorm with everyone like this? No, I don't think so. The two main characters were not likable, nor did they have any redeeming characteristics that I could discern. I struggled to find any sympathy for them.

The plot was quick and there was a decent amount of trying to figure out who did what and when etc. However I felt there were too many holes left in the character's life that didn't make sense. After the "event" what did she do for the rest of her college career? All of a sudden there are 2 new girlfriends who we know nothing about nor do we ever get any info. The wrap up at the end was bizarre to say the least. It came out of nowhere and really made no sense. I don't think it was set up properly at all. I love a good psychological thriller but this was not it.

This story is told in two time frames – primarily it’s a flashback to the year Amb and Sully, the main characters, were just beginning college, (although you’d never know it from how little attention is paid to studying, papers, tests, classes). Instead, for them, their first semester consisted primarily of an endless round of parties, drinking, drug use, and casual sex. Amb has a roommate Flora, whose high school boyfriend goes to a nearby university. When he comes to campus to visit her, Amb accidentally meets him without realizing his connection to said roommate and falls hard, jettisoning any consideration of Flora and her feelings and instead desperately trying to win him for herself. Within hours, she’s made him a fairy-tale prince and imagines a happily-ever-after with him, out of all proportion to their brief encounter. Her obsession leads to a tragic event and now, at her ten-year college reunion, she’s getting creepy emails that threaten to reveal her role in the tragedy that occurred. So it’s one part whodunit (who’s sending the emails, who’s after revenge) and one part mean girls at college. For me, neither Amb nor her utterly without socially-redeeming qualities flamboyant best friend Sully were appealing – their behavior was over the top narcissistic and infantile, all they cared about was themselves, their popularity, and making themselves the center of every drama. And their “victim”, poor Flora? She was a stereotype – the virginal good girl who takes everyone at face value and never suspects a thing. While the writing style itself was well done, I felt the plot was tedious and repetitive and none of the major characters seemed realistic or fully fleshed out, but were instead quite superficial and one-note. I’m not opposed to unlikeable narrators but they need to be compelling and well-drawn. Help me understand why they behave the way they do, show me something positive even if it’s that they’re clever, or witty or had a lousy childhood. Otherwise, they’re someone ordered up by central casting – compelling free spirit, low-esteem hanger-on, clueless boyfriend, the hopelessly handsome but hapless husband. Readers nowadays want more. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC.

This was a fast-paced and twisty read that I kept reading late into the night to see what happened. It centers on Ambrosia (Amb), who gets invited to her 10 year college reunion at Wesleyan, but doesn't want to go due to bad (yet unexplained at first) experiences there. Her husband, Adrian, convinces her to go and it becomes clear that someone is out to make her atone for actions from her past. The narrative alternates between Amb's college years and the current time at the reunion.

Firstly, none of these characters are likeable but I felt that they were believable for the most part. You will likely see some of the meanness and insecurity in them that you recognize from people you came across in your own adolescence. I kind of got why Amb was like she was, but do wish that I could have gotten some more background info around why Sully was like she was.

This is not a feel good book and it made me feel sad for one or more of the characters multiple times, but it was twisty and gritty and overall fun to read. I was surprised that I didn't see the twist coming because once it was revealed, it was so obvious- I was impressed that the author was able to do that. The end of the book seemed like a bit of a stretch, but fit in well with the tone of the rest of the story.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who like psychological thrillers and mysteries and don't mind a book where you don't really like the characters. I am looking forward to reading other books by this author. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn is a dark, twisted, and gritty thriller about a college reunion gone wrong. Ambrosia has worked hard to reinvent her life after college, but when she receives an invite to her 10-year reunion, the secrets of Ambrosia’s past come back to the surface. My thoughts:

Liked:
-The story alternates between the present reunion and Amb’s freshman year and I was glued to my kindle from the beginning. Amb’s secrets are not revealed at the onset; the reader is as much in the dark as Amb’s husband which I really enjoyed. I thought the secrets were revealed at the exact right moments and there were a few twists I was not expecting at all.
-While 99% of these characters are unlikeable, the author really nailed down each one. I couldn’t help but relate to Amb at certain moments (especially in her freshman year). I haven’t read a book where the author so accurately pinpointed and reflected the insecurities girls face on the brink of adulthood. I knew Ambrosia, Sully. and Flora; I knew these girls and I was these girls.

Disliked🥴:
-This definitely isn’t an uplifting, feel good read. Most of the characters are mean girls, who become mean women. There were a lot of dark topics addressed in this book: suicide, rape, murder, toxic friendships/relationships, manipulation, and self harm to name a few.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Girls Are All So Nice Here will be available in March 2021! (4/5⭐️)

I am a little torn on this book. I liked it, but thought it dragged in the middle. It had a lot about "mean girl" action and would be a good warning to a teen to early 20s girl. The ending was good, but I didn't like the very ending (how people turned out). Basically I kept thinking that someone who had such a rough time in college would not go back to her reunion. Her husband seemed like a really nice guy who would have understood if she had just said she had some rough times and did not want to go. I don't know if it would have protected her from the bad person, but I just kept thinking that if it was me I wouldn't have gone or would have left after the first day.

I received a complimentary copy of Sweet Taste of Muscadines from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Mesmerizing novel! I wish I had been able to read this in one sitting and recommend that to others—very difficult to put down! A split timeline maintains suspense throughout and allows for an intimate understanding of the all too real characters. Two ethically despicable college girls challenge one another and perform terrible actions, which trigger a chain of events leading to the demise of an innocent bystander. Fantastically written—loved this book! (I will happily read more work from this author!)

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.