Wow! Absolutely one the craziest, best psychological thrillers I’ve read yet. Completely different type of thriller that I’ve read before! So many of us can relate to the characters as well as be completely appalled by them & their actions! A must read ❤️❤️

Camille Gardener is a grieving mother having lost her fifteen-year-old daughter, Emily. Even after five years, she still cannot seem to move on as her now ex-husband, old friends, and latest therapist had recommended. But how can she move on, when justice never prevailed? When she finds an online community of mothers in similar situations, she begins to find hope. Will the help provided from these women finally give her the answers she so desperately seeks?

Quickly get swept away in a whirlwind of grief, retribution, deceit, mystery, and crime in Alison Gaylin’s The Collective. An enthralling tale of unpredictability, this novel not only keeps you guessing but takes psychological game play to another level.

Although competently written with minimal spelling and grammatical errors, the amount of profanity used does affect the rating. Therefore a 4 out of 5 stars is given.

Some triggers include: alcohol and drug use (including underage), overdose, rape, depression, suicide, manipulation, and murder. Please be cautious if any of these may cause distress.

In the market for a suspenseful, psychological crime thriller? Then mark November 2, 2021 on the calendar, to grab this book when released.

Thank you to #SceneOfTheCrime, #BookClubGirls, #NetGalley, #The Collective, #AlisonGaylin, and #WilliamMorrow for the opportunity to read this book and give my honest review.

Camille Gardner is in pain every day since the death of her daughter. She's also become obsessed with the family, and the boy who was responsible. When she realizes that he is about to receive an award from his college, she couldn't help but attend. However, she soon realized that the responsible family didn't feel any shame or remorse, and that she is the one who is branded the grief stricken crazy. Everyone keeps telling Camille to believe in karma--but it doesn't seem that karma will reach this blessed family.

And then she receives an invitation to join a group of women who are determined to have a hand in helping karma along. A collective of women who have all faced tragedy with murderers who seemed to walk free with little to no consequences. Camille joins the group and begins to wonder how we can decide who is innocent and who deserves to be punished. And Camille realizes that she may be in way over her head.

I loved this book of tragedy and revenge. The Collective really spoke to those stories we always hear about in the news where tragedy strikes and it seems the punishment didn't fit the crime. Just when I thought I had it figured it I was thrown for a loop. Definitely worth the read!

The Collective is a twisty, revenge thriller that grabbed me from the beginning and didn't let go even after finishing. Camille is a grieving mother who is still deeply angry at the young man who killed her daughter years after it happened. Her marriage and most of her relationships have fallen apart. After she is given a business card that eventually leads her to the dark web, she begins a journey into the world of vengeance. This book deals with a lot of heavy issues like grief, revenge, hatred, and a justice system that doesn't always deliver justice. You can feel the grief of Camille and the other mothers, but you are also imploring them to climb out of the dark hole they are going down. Thanks to Book Club Girl and William Morrow for the ARC.

The Collective was a mostly good read and not super predictable which I enjoyed. It centered around grief and bitterness that turns into revenge and vigilante justice, and how there is always a price to pay when that monster is fed.

Initially the first part of it felt a fairly uncomfortable for me - just kind of that feeling of looking at something ugly and hoping someone was going to name it for what it was but afraid they wouldn’t. It was throwing a fair amount of validity and justification on getting vengeance and feeding hate, as if it was going to fix everything when justice wasn’t served and grief felt helpless, taking it into your own hands.

But by the end the book, it started to shed light on the fact that there was sometimes more to a story than black and white, right and wrong. I don’t know that it did a ton of this to be honest but it at least touched on it, how life isn’t that simple and you can end up in this never ending black hole when one step leads to another you can’t get out of it. That you can always look at someone else as the offender without giving a second thought to how you cause an offense, and in condemning someone else this way, you condemn yourself. In the end it still felt a little skeevy to me in the vague ethics of it all though.

I can’t say it was favorite and still left a lot open to interpretation on the morality of vengeance, justice, bitterness, and hatred. But as a book and story in and of itself it was a pretty good story line.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book I've read by this award-winning author and it was a great introduction! In this riveting story of loss and revenge, Gaylin checks all the boxes that make for a terrific thriller: excellent writing, pacing that only allows one to catch one's breath before taking off again and twists thrown in at just the right time to keep the reader on their heels.

Meet Camille Gardner. She is a grieving mother whose daughter died five years ago and she has yet to come to grips with the loss. Believing a well-connected young man got away with murdering her daughter, Camille haunts him and believes she would do anything to make him pay. She confronts him at at a ceremony where he is being honored and makes such a spectacle of herself that she draws the attention of a secret group of like-minded grieving women. This online collective share their stories of loss with graphic depictions of revenge on those they think were not sufficiently punished.. Camille has finally found an outlet for her anger but when one of the targets for revenge actually turns up dead, Camille begins to wonder if she has stumbled onto something more than an outlet for venting anger. She is drawn deeper and deeper into this group on the dark web and begins to lose her perspective of right and wrong, healing versus revenge. Can she find her way or will she be swallowed by the collective?

Although the book seemed to start off a little slow, it was necessary background work for the rocket ride that followed. I devoured this book in a couple of days as I just couldn't put it down and once I did, I found myself trying to figure out what direction the author was going to take. The story twists are shocking and I know the ending will stay with me for quite a while.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for an advance copy of this book. The publication date is November 2, 2021.

Okay, so fifty pages in and I knew exactly where this was going. I didn’t read the synopsis but if you are a fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies or Robert Walker you would have heard of or better yet, watched, Strangers On A Train and you would know exactly why I figured out what was happening so quickly. Well, I was close anyway. LOL

I read the last one hundred or so pages this morning when I woke up because there was no way I was doing anything else until I finished this book. It killed me to stop reading yesterday so I decided at page no. 232 that I was not going to put this book down the next time I picked it up until I finished it.

It is a suspenseful, thriller of a book that I didn’t want to stop reading because it just was so good and then the very end, wow!

Camille has suffered the loss of her only child. Her child’s name and reputation was destroyed by her killer, her rich boy killer and his influential parents. Her husband seemingly accepted the loss and has moved on without her. The only thing keeping Camille going is her hatred of her daughter’s killer until she is handed a white business card with only one word printed on it. The card is the beginning of Camille’s slide down the rabbit hole.

Terrific book!

Thank you to Scene of The Crime, NetGalley, William Morrow, HarperCollins Publishers and the author, Alison Gaylin for an Advanced E-Proof of this book.

Camille Gardner knows who is responsible for the death of her teenage daughter. But, thanks to great lawyers, there were no consequences for her daughter's killer. Five years have gone by, and Camille is still struggling. After a video of Camille shouting "murderer" at her daughter's killer goes viral, Camille finds a group of mothers grieving the wrongful deaths of their children on the dark web. How far will these moms go to seek justice?

I couldn't put The Collective down! As a mother, I could empathize with Camille's grief and understand her inability to move on without justice for her daughter. It was easy to see how her quest for justice quickly got her in over her head.

The Collective is a twisty thriller that deals with issues like revenge, morality, vigilanteism, injustice, privilege, and the power of cult-like groups. Readers are left wondering: Can two wrongs make a right?

Get ready for a wild ride! The Collective is an intense and complex psychological thriller that will stay with you long after finishing the book.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Custom House for the digital copy to read and review. This review reflects my honest, unbiased opinion.

Unputdownable. Is that a word? Well, Alison Gaylin's newest, The Collective, grabs you quickly by the throat and doesn't let go until you've read the last shocking word.

Camille is a grieving mother. Five years after her daughter's death, she's still fueled by her anger, obsessed that the man she believes killed her is still walking on this earth.

When she draws the attention of The Collective, a secretive group of women just like her, she finds comfort that there's a place--albeit on the dark web--where she can unleash the violent fantasy she wish could befall her daughter's killer.

Camille at first thinks it's all a game, but as she learns that her new sisterhood is devising and carrying out revenge and justice on its own, she beings to wonder if they're all doing the right thing or if they've truly turned into monsters. And it's a realization that that could destroy her.

I'm a little conflicted by this book. I liked it, honestly, and read it more quickly than anything else lately. It's an engrossing thriller, and it makes you really think about justice, and how some escape it. As a mother, I could absolutely relate to the Collective's rage (not personally, but in an imaginative way if anything happened to my children). But on the same note, that same rage wasn't entirely effective because it was a little repetitive. And frankly, with the state of the world (and there's plenty to rage about!), anger is exhausting. This may not be the book for you if you're looking to get away from it all.

I think I might have been a little more emotionally invested with a deeper look at Camille's relationship with her daughter and a more immediate loss of her. Instead, the book relies on one child's death after another (it's a little heavy handed in the delivery, as they're all highly sensationalized "ripped from the headlines" ones. Example: billionaire who preys on young girls? Check) and several violent instances of revenge that one feels a bit desensitized by it all.

That being said, it was an overall satisfying read for me and I can honestly say I didn't see the twist coming. Thank you to William Morrow, through the Scene of the Crime book club, for giving me the opportunity to read and review this copy.

Camille's life is turned upside down when her daughter dies. She languishes in grief, loses her husband, and spends days plotting revenge against the boy who she thinks is responsible. Camille is at the end of her rope until she is contacted by an online support group. The Collective helps channel her grief and anger but little does she know that what she thought was a game, turns out to put herself in real danger.
This is a fast paced, action packed thriller that grabs you from the first paragraph. You feel for Camille as you experience her grief and anger. You hope that she finds peace. The many twists and turns keep you on the edge of your seat, trying to guess what the motive of The Collective is and who is involved.
I really enjoyed the story and it kept me intrigued. I'd recommend reading this if you like to be surprised.
Thank you to Netgalley, William Morrow,  and the Scene of the Crime Early Reads for the advanced copy of the book. The opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow and Custom House for the ARC! Wow what an engaging and thrilling read! Did not want this story to end. What an ending did not see that coming!
Will recommend!

It's been five years since the death of Camille Gardner's daughter, but she is still grieving and mad as hell. Her daughter's killer is not only walking around a free man, but he is being honored with an award. When Camille shows up and makes a scene (that gets caught on camera and goes viral), she attracts the attention of The Collective, a group of women not unlike herself, grieving for their lost children.

The Collective take matters into their own hands and plot complex scenarios wherein their children's' killers are finally brought to justice. Once Camille realizes this isn't a game and there are actual lives at stake, she begins to wonder whether The Collective is a group of vigilante heroes or women blinded by anger seeking revenge.

Once this one got going it absolutely did not let up until the very last page. I got serious Dexter vibes while reading, so I think fans of the show will enjoy this book as well. I only have two "gripes" as far as this book is concerned: 1. The chapters were pretty long which I don't typically enjoy. 2. The ending left so much to be desired for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Alison Gaylin for the opportunity to review an early copy of The Collective in exchange for my honest review. It will be on bookshelves near you November 2!

Lots of moral questions to ponder in this twisty thriller. It kept moving and I didn't see the end coming.

The Collective is an engaging thriller that leaves you thinking about it after you finish. It is a story of grieving mothers that are angry that those that they believe are responsible for their child’s deaths are not held responsible. It is very sad to read some of their stories but necessary to see how they react. Thank you NetGalley for the chance to review this book.

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

The Collective by Alison Gaylin is a dark tale about grief and revenge. This book was hard to read at times but I could not put it down and read it in a day. It was full of many turns and twists and if you like suspenseful thrillers you will want to read this book. Thanks to Netgalley for this arc.

The Collective is an edge of your seat thriller that you don’t want to miss out on!

Camille Gardener lost her daughter tragically five years earlier and she has not been able to cope. When she finds an anonymous online group of grieving mothers, Camille thinks she may finally make peace with the wrongful death of her daughter, and the murderer that got away. However, this online group is more than what they seem. Known as a collective, they do more than just talk about how they want to see justice served. They actually plan it out. What has Camille actually gotten herself in to and can she get out before it’s too late?

I could not put this book down! We find out exactly what happens to Camille’s daughter and of course no one can ever move on from the death of a child. You follow her journey into the collective and learn of other mothers and their grief and how their own children perished at the hands of others, but no justice was ever served. You want what they all want: revenge. You feel for these grieving mothers, however at the back of your mind you question if and when this group will ultimately go too far.

Those looking for a true psychological and suspenseful thriller will not be disappointed when they read The Collective.


I received this as an ARC from NetGalley for my honest review.

A tense powerful chilling book about revenge and grief and identity. Do two wrongs make a right. What happens when you get involved with a group of woman wanting revenge and you want out? What happens when you are not who you thought you were? the story about yourself that you tell. This hard hitting book starts and doesn't let up on the last page and beyond

The Collective by Alison Gaylin

“The recipient of the Martha L. Koch Humanitarian Award this year is a young man who exemplifies public service.”

Five years ago, Camille’s daughter Emily was killed at a fraternity party. Five years with no justice and now they are going to reward her murderer with an award!

Camille joins The Collective, a group of women who want the same thing “JUSTICE” for their lost loved ones. At least that's what she thought when she accepted the invitation to join. When Camille finds out the club's true intentions, she will need to decide if she wants justice or revenge! But also how far she will go to make it a reality!

This was a gripping twisted classic revenge story or at least that’s what you will think going in, but this one, the author, has added a unique twist! I have read a few revenge books but not like this one! It is a little slow going at first, but once it gets going, I promise you won't be able to read fast enough! The plot is complex but Alison Gaylin did a great job bringing it altogether but also keeping that realistic feel to it! Overall, a great read!

This is going to be a great pick for book clubs! I know I will be pitching it to mine!

Happy reading everyone!

Thank you William Morrow and Custom House for sharing a e-galley with me in exchange for an honest review!

What??? The Collective was crazy good, reading quickly with constant twists and turns I wasn’t expecting. It also creates a scenario that’s scary and features about the biggest moral ground gray zone you could address-the death of a beloved child where a guilty party suffers little to no consequences. This is very much the state of mind protagonist Camille is in after her daughter Emily is raped and murdered. All she can think about is seeing the young man suffer, and his parents begin to feel what she does. And a very public meltdown leads her to The Collective, a group that might just see her wishes play out. Camille quickly realizes that it may not be the game she thought it was, but the power trip she’s on from helping mete out justice begins to wane when she realizes just how far The Collective’s tentacles reach, and that she may have put herself in their crosshairs by not blindly obeying orders. This story perfectly preys on the idea that you could get sucked into something above your head without realizing it, and terrifies you with the premise that there could be such a large group of people working together that could have it out for you and make your misfortune look like an accident-Strangers on a Train for the digital age!