I received a gifted galley of HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND by Lexie Elliott for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review!

HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND begins with a funeral. A few months back a group of friends who have known each other since University gathered at a beautiful seaside resort. For an unknown reason Lissa, one of the resort’s owners and one of the central figures in the group, went swimming in a dangerous area rumored to be the home of a sea monster in the middle of the night. Her body was found but then lost again at sea so her friends and family have gathered for a memorial.

The book is told an alternating perspectives between Lissa’s two best friends. Georgie was not there when Lissa lost her life and she is hoping to find answers. Bron is still traumatized by the death of her friend and secrets from her past. When both women receive anonymous messages, clearly there is more going on than meets the eye.

I really went into reading this blind knowing nothing more than the book had a very intriguing title. From the first page where the narrator considers the ins and outs of pushing someone off a cliff, I was hooked. There is humor and mystery and the possibility of a dangerous sea creatures lurking in the waters. Who’s ready for a tropical beach getaway?

I initially enjoyed Georgie’s perspective the most. Since she wasn’t present on the last trip, she’s seeing everything through fresh eyes along with the reader. Bron took a bit longer to connect to. She’s made some bad choices in her past and she feels the ramifications of that as they trickle through her relationships. That said I did find her perspective very intriguing as we got to know her better. I especially enjoyed the interludes ever few chapters where an unknown narrator is contemplating the ins and outs of how to practically pull off the murder of a friend.

This book had some great twists and turns, not all of which I expected. I would recommend you add this to your TBR!

Back in university, Georgie, Bronwyn and Lissa were inseparable, dominating their college swim team and forming a lasting bond with fellow swimmers Duncan, Adam and Graeme. Lissa and Graeme would subsequently marry, but his sudden death several years later seemed to send her into a tailspin. She rebounded almost too quickly into the arms of charming, handsome Jem, the owner of a luxurious eco-conscious island resort. None of their friends actually expected them to marry, but soon enough Lissa was off to work and live in paradise with her new husband.

In the years since college, the gang has grown apart somewhat, with Lissa and Jem in the tropics, Duncan and Bron each raising their own young families back in England, and Adam and Georgie concentrating on their careers while pretending not to have feelings for one another. Georgie even moved to Manhattan, and was secretly glad to be further away from the rest of the group. Their secrets and burdens were beginning to weigh on her, which was the main reason she declined to attend their latest get-together on Jem and Lissa’s island. It’s a choice she’ll regret though, as Lissa goes missing that very trip while on an uncharacteristic solo night swim off of dangerous Kanu Cove.

When Georgie finally makes her way to the island, it’s for the sad occasion of Lissa’s memorial service. The rest of the gang is already there, grieving their lost friend… or so it seems. For Georgie starts getting disturbing messages hinting at foul play, while Bron is faced with even more explicit threats. As guests and employees start leaving the troubled resort behind, the women don’t know who to trust or what to believe. The locals claim that Lissa was taken by the sea monster that lurks in Kanu Cove, but none of the Brits are inclined to listen, at least not until they have an eerie sighting while swimming themselves, off a boat captained by expat and resort employee Steve:

QUOTE
Adam calls it a creature, and Georgie is using that word too, but sometimes she calls it a serpent instead. Steve has been wondering if it was some kind of harmless basking shark, but I see the doubt in his own eyes as he says it, and the others all agree that it was far too long--Adam estimates almost twenty meters--and much too thin for that; they got enough of an eyeful of it streaming under them to at least agree on that. I think of the cold brush of my leg in the cave; I think of the shadow that passed beneath me. For all my much-lauded practicality, it may be some time before I can get either out of my head.
END QUOTE

Told from the alternating perspectives of Bron and Georgie, this book follows their investigations as a tropical idyll turns into a hellish nightmare of wind and water, as secrets from the past and monsters from the present refuse to stay submerged, threatening to destroy them both. The women’s viewpoint chapters are divided by eight ruminations on ways to kill your best friend, as it becomes clear that one of the friends has definitely been thinking of murdering another. The question for us readers is who and why, even as that unidentified narrator mulls over the how:

QUOTE
But… drowning. Difficult to do--and yet, not. Executable and believable, it ticks those boxes; of course I could engineer an opportunity for the just the two of us to swim together. That’s not the difficult bit. The difficult bit is the actual doing of it. [And] I don’t know that I could do [it]. Not in the water. Water, swimming, the clarity of it, the cleanness of it: that’s what’s been saving me. It’s sacred, in a way. I don’t feel I can sully it.
END QUOTE

How To Kill Your Best Friend examines the cost of loyalty, and the choices we make in supporting our friends even when they do wrong. It talks about growing up and growing away from people you once thought the entire world of, and what to do when your worst suspicions of them are confirmed. While this book glories in the joys of swimming, in open water or otherwise, it also has a delicious supernatural element that doesn’t detract at all from the realism of the murder mystery at the core of it. The novel also boasts an ending that I did not see coming, yet was utterly satisfying in its resolution.

A funeral at a posh island resort isn’t supposed to be fun, but in Lexie Elliott’s new mystery, How to Kill Your Best Friend, it’s more than sad, it’s deadly. And complicated.
Georgie, Bronwyn, and Lissa are close friends having swam competitively together in college. But there long have been undercurrents in the relationships particularly after Bronwyn had an affair with Lissa’s first husband now deceased.
“Lissa, the strongest swimmer of them all, has somehow drowned off the coast of the fabulous island resort she owned with her husband,” says Elliott, who tells the story through the eyes of Georgie and Bronwyn. The two are among a group of mourners—all with interconnecting ties going back to college. But beyond the grieving are questions—and soon violence. Georgie is attacked and both she and Bron begin receiving threatening messages. Plus, there are so many secrets including whether the posh resort is going bankrupt. But even more so, are questions about what really happened. After all, why would Lissa swim in an area known for its deadly currants and is she really dead? And why did Georgie believe that the only way to stop Lissa from murdering again was to figure out the best way to kill her.
A sudden storm hits the island, cutting them off from the mainland and leaving the friends to figure out whether Lissa is really dead or not and who can they trust as the winds crash through windows and turn glass and roofing into weapons while the rains pelt down.
Like the characters in her book, Elliott says her life has always been steeped in chlorine.
“I swam competitively through my school years and represented Oxford University in both swimming and water polo,” she says. “I first dabbled in open water swimming whilst at Oxford and won the Scottish Open Water Championships in the year 2000. Post university, I switched across to triathlons, but after I had my first child, I dipped my toe back into the open water swimming scene and ultimately swam solo across the English Channel in 2007. It took me twelve and a half hours and it was very cold and very far; whilst I’m delighted to have done it, I have no intention of ever doing it again.”
Elliott may be the last person one would expect to be writing mystery-thrillers. She holds a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford and had worked as an investment banker with her husband and two children in London. But when she was downsized during the Global Financial Crisis, she decided to pursue writing—a long time dream. This is her third novel and though now she’s back at work, she is already finishing up the next. She can’t divulge the plot except to say it involves Oxford and the French Alps.

A sinister atmospheric psychological thriller sure to engulf readers into its tangled web of lies filled with perpetual suspicion and anxiety. Old college friends reunite at a resort villa in Kanu Cove in attendance for a memorial service of their friend Lissa who died from an accidental drowning. During their stay at the resort, a series of strange and forbidding occurrences begin to take place. Written in an alternating first person narratives between Georgie and Bronwyn, gripping secrets and fear began to surface threatening lives of the friends. 

A perfect getaway on a beautiful island. The atmospheric element of the resort was stunningly breathtaking. Through Lexie Elliott's descriptive words, I was able to visualize and absorb the sensory pleasure of the island's surrounding and beautiful view of the Kanu Cove with its flowing tide. The writing flows like the ocean. The ebb and flow of the tide is serenely beautiful yet it's unfathomable and chaotic mirroring the uncertainty of the characters and the peril. The pacing was a slow-burn, unfolding into an atmospheric dread and misgiving towards all characters. The weather pattern was one of the significant tools Lexie Elliott utilized in reflecting the characters' moods and the ominous premonition befalling the friends. A key in setting the dramatic mood and depicting the psychological state of the characters. This book is focused more as a character study and a psychological mind game. I constantly felt the need to question the reliability of our protagonists' narratives and their motives. As the story unfolds it builds up to a perfect climax with a deadly twist. An enthralling psychological thriller full of high tension with dynamic characters and surprising resolution. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What makes for a better thriller than a destination wedding? Well, it has to be a gathering at an exotic resort for the memorial of an old college friend. Georgie and Bronwyn give us their perspectives on this reunion to mourn their best friend Lissa. Joining them there are the three remaining men from their swim team days at uni. There are many surprises to be had during their stay including emails that are released from fire wall quarantine that were written by the deceased. Strange messages appear on mirrors. And, there is a mythical sea serpent in the mix. Interspersed between chapters are interludes about methods that could be used to kill your best friend. Who is doing the research? You will have to read the book to find out. I found the pacing to be spot on and the anonymous plotting just the right additional ingredient. Take this one along on your next trip to the pool or the beach.

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

This story of a friend group that has many tangles in their complicated web, set at an isolated luxury resort, is just tricky enough to be really engaging and interesting. There are interesting choices made and the story says something about loyalty and friendship, alongside being an entertaining and pageturning mystery.

All of us psychos who spend our free time reading mystery/thriller novels have at least at one point in our lives asked ourselves how easy it would be to kill someone. Is it as easy as the books make out, or would you be caught red-handed in only a couple of days? I really did enjoy the witty short segments of How to Kill Your Best Friend where a mysterious narrator overviews different methods of murder and how effective they are. Sadly, the actual story didn't live up to the short blurbs and I found myself bored at many times.

Definitely feels like it walks the line of being a YA novel and an adult novel at some points, creating a drastic tone difference between some chapters. I appreciated the whodunit aspect and returning some forms of the classic formula but the mystery wasn't engaging enough for me to keep a close note of all the clues and suspicions.

In the end I decided that I wanted more of the snarky anonymous best-friend killer, but you can still find enjoyment out of the murder mystery aspect.

Having just lost my best friend tragically, I could so identify with Georgie’s and Bronwyn’s emotions. It’s never easy losing someone you love, let alone that someone is your best friend. Georgie and Bron were staying at their best friend’s resort missing her like crazy attending her funeral. They would have much rather been visiting on better terms. What was so odd for them is how their best friend, Lissa, died. Lissa was a swimmer. She was a strong one at that! What Georgie and Bron couldn’t wrap their head around was how a strong swimmer like Lissa could have drowned and worst of all, where she drowned, at Kanu Cove?

Lissa’s husband, as well as her parents, couldn’t believe she drowned. In fact, everyone that knew Lissa had a hard time with her death. She had everything to live for. And she loved her life. To honor their deceased friend, they decided to take one final swim like they all used to do. Only problem was the locals had warned them that there was a serpent lurking in those waters. A serpent? Surely, they must have been mistaken, right? Is that what killed Lissa, they wondered? Despite the warnings and grumblings, they took their swim and very strange things happened while out in the water.

Not only were strange things happening in the water, Bron had some rather rude and threatening messages written to her on her bathroom mirror and walls. Hmm? Georgie received late email messages from the dead, literally. Yes, Lissa had reached out to her. How was any of this possible? Well, in order to find out, you have to read the rest of the story.

I’ve never read this author before and she has a very interesting style of writing. In fact, this story was well written, but what I struggled with is the amount of detail and what the detail focused on which was entirely too much movement. What I mean by that, the detail described pretty much every single thing the character was thinking and/or doing. There really wasn’t much room left for the reader to take on her/his own. The biggest hurdle I struggled with was the amount of detail regarding the swimming. I’m not what you would call a strong swimmer by any means, but I must say I know a great deal about every stroke, breath and submerging that there is to know regarding the water. It was a bit too much for my tastes. But the biggest problem I had with this story is that there wasn’t much mystery. I figured the entire story out and there were things that happened, which I will not leave any spoilers, that were never addressed. It was as if those things were afterthoughts and just merely forgotten. So, I was confused as to what really happened with some of those scenarios?

Overall, this was not a bad read. It was quite engaging and very well written. But, for me, too much detail can turn me off and that’s where it went left for me. By any means am I saying you can’t get through the book. You most certainly can. This story line comes down to preference. Every reader has his/her pet peeves and for me, detail can be a killer, of sorts.

Beautiful people have problems too! And sometimes those problems aren’t just whose f-ing who! Mostly tho, these problems wrap themselves around each other. I had a hard time with this book. The dual viewpoint narrators were too close in tone. It didn’t feel necessary to have them both narrate the story, especially because it was so easy to forget which one of them was narrating. I’ve seen this in books before, and it’s a trend I cannot get behind. Different points of perspective should be wildly different. This book really suffered from this style, and made it more work to read.

A slow burner mystery with no detective. A college reunion occurs on a caribbean island resort every few years. One of them has a swimming accident under mysterious circumstances. At a memorial, one of the friends (the main protaganist) thinks it is suspicious that it is more than an accident (and proceeds to figure out the suspect).

Nothing too complicated, moves along at a slow pace except towards the end. Not difficult to figure out the murderer, here, since it is a 'reunion.' Love that title, though!

Lexie Elliott is going to be the next big author. I can feel it.

This is everything I want Liane Moriarty to be that she isn’t. A fast paced thriller with multiple characters, and the perfect amount of satire throughout. I mean let’s discuss the TITLE. Absolutely legendary. Imagine sitting in a coffee shop reading this book. Everyone will stare and it will be amazing.

Each part of the story is separated by different ways to kill your best friend. They were the perfect pallet cleanser in between each part of the story and always made me giggle. It reminded me of Gossip Girl when the narrator would break the 4th wall of the show and give little hints about what was about to happen.

This book was truly exciting all the way through, not just during plot twists. I loved that you don’t know who to trust and everyone honestly seems innocent in their own way. It was a really different approach from your average everyone is the bad guy, “Alex Michaelides style” suspense novel. To be honest though, this got sooo slow in the middle I almost had to DNF. I feel like halfway through I really needed something significant to happen to keep me holding on. There was a plot twist in the middle that propelled to story forward but it honestly wasn’t a big enough plot twist to keep me glued to the pages.

The setting of this book was probably the best part. It’s like the most amazing glamorous resort you could ever imagine, all while remaining extremely creepy. It was somewhere that I was envious of but would never want to actually go to.

Another fun fact was all the swimming references. At the end of the book, Elliott explains she is an avid swimmer and you can really tell with all the swimming references. Which, not only were they extremely interesting, it was really pivotal to the plot.

Overall, I would SO suggest this book! For a relatively unknown author, I was blown away and the story has really stuck with me! I can’t seem to leave this universe!


Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!


Fore more of my reviews, check me out @bitchinbookclub_

Lissa, Georgie and Bronwyn are close friends so when Lissa is presumed dead after a drowning accident, of course there are questions. How could such a strong swimmer drown? Where is the body? If it wasn’t an accident… are Georgie and Bronwyn even safe?

The friends, along with some other fellow swimmers, gather at a resort to honor Lissa’s death, and the author lets little secrets slowly drip onto the pages.
Not exactly a fast-paced thriller, but with a satisfying ending, I would recommend it to readers who don’t mind waiting for the second half to be heavily more entertaining than the first.

How could Lissa have drowned?

She was a champion swimmer and knew not to swim in Kanu Cove in the dark, but she is gone.

We meet Georgie and Bronwyn at Lissa’s memorial service, but something is wrong.

Bronwyn received a note on the mirror in her villa that said she was at fault for Lissa’s death, and Georgie received a heavy packet of papers with only the words FOLLOW THE MONEY on every page.

Bronwyn was nervous, and Georgie had no clue what her message meant.

As we spend the days on the resort island, things seem to get more dangerous for everyone, and everyone seems to be acting a little strangely.

Who can anyone trust? Who can we the reader trust as we try to figure out what’s going on?

As you read, your head will be going back and forth between what’s going on, what really happened, and what is up with the characters.

And…to add to the confusion, there is an unidentified person talking about ways to kill someone.

I actually didn’t like the characters so they all were suspects in my mind.

The story line was a little mixed up and slow, but it worked out in the end because of Ms. Elliott’s writing style and creativity. 3/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first book from this author, but it will not be my last. She managed to take a few tropes that I love and combine them with some tropes that I usually side eye in this kind of mystery thriller, but the result was a story that I really enjoyed and an authorial voice that totally won me over. I particularly loved one of our POV characters, Georgie, and overall, this was a satisfying thriller with interesting themes around the undercurrents between close friends

The novel opens as Bronwyn stumbles in late to a funeral on Kanu Island. One of her best friends, Lissa, has drowned while swimming off the coast of the opulent beach resort owned by Lissa and her husband. Now Bronwyn and Georgie, friends with Lissa since the three of them ruled the college swim team, find themselves trapped on the island with the rest of the funeral attendees. A storm is moving in that will prevent them from leaving the island, and the feeling that things are not right and someone is watching them. Even though the island is gorgeous and their accommodations are exquisite, Lissa's death was only the start as things get scarier and more suspenseful at each turn of the page. Lexie Elliott has crafted a mystery so suspenseful that you won't be able to put it down! Fans of Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell will enjoy this book as will anyone who loves a creepy, twisty mystery. Thanks to Net Galley for the chance to read the ARC.

Georgie, Lissa and Bronwyn have been besties since their college days, when they were on the swim team. That’s why it’s such a shock when Lissa drowns off the coast of Kanu Cove, where Lissa and her husband own an island resort.
Friends gather for a memorial service, but Georgie and Bron feel that something is amiss. Was this an accident or did someone murder their friend? It’s hard to know who to trust.
Lots of twists and turns in this one.

I tried multiple times to download this book but it didn't work. Not sure if there is a glitch but it wasn't able to be sent to my Kindle or downloaded onto my iPad. It was unfortunate because I thought it looked really good.

Georgie and Bronwyn have gathered at the exclusive resort where their best friend disappeared, presumedly drowned. But Lissa was the best swimmer of them all, it seems so unlikely... As the two, Lisa's husband and their friends attend the memorial, something isn't right. Mysterious messages are scrawled on mirrors and when the weather and a fabled sea monster prevents them from leaving the small island, danger could be lurking around any corner...

I found the pacing of this one a bit slow. The story alternates between Georgie and Bronwyn's perspectives, as well as someone planning to kill their best friend, but it kind of lags a bit, almost treading water to use a swimming pun - there is a lot of swimming mentioned. The ending does ratchet up a bit, and there are a few surprises waiting there as well.

I had a really difficult time getting into this book. While I don't think the book itself is poorly written or bad, I just had a hard time focusing on it so it was a DNF for me.

I found “How To Kill Your Best Friend” a spooky, thrill ride. Set in a tropical, Asian Island resort, it has a fantasy island gone wrong vibe as we meet an interesting cast of characters. The story is told through both Georgie and Bron as they attend the memorial of their best friend, Lissa. On first glace you see Georgie as ultra-chic, elegant, but very secretive and Bron as the sweet, uncomplicated, girl-next-door/working mom. We quickly learn both women are not quite what they seem. When the book delves into their tumultuous relationship with Lissa, the mystery of her death only increases.

The pacing can be a little uneven at times, but it doesn’t stray too far away from the plot. With a few plot twists at the end, I was a little sorry to finish the last page. Definitely a great vacation and/or beach read.