After escaping Liberty Lake thanks to a scholarship, Mary almost had it all. She lost weight, was close to graduating from an Ivy League, had many friends, and had no plans to return to the city escaped. Then she finally let out all the anger she’d been keeping in, leading to her expulsion. Mary finds herself back in Liberty Lake with student loans breathing down her neck as she works a minimum wage job when her former childhood friend, Olivia, goes missing. With nothing better to do, Mary finds herself becoming increasingly obsessed with the case, especially when she becomes convinced that there’s a serial killer involved.

Narrated by Mary, we follow her from the moment her dad arrives to help her move out of her dorm room. Lonely, angry, depressed, and ashamed, she doesn’t tell anyone the real reason she’s not at school. Not even her best friend. We spend a lot of time in her head learning why she’s angry and depressed. The more we get to know Mary, the more it becomes apparent that she has had anger issues for a long time and is obsessed with fitting with her peers while being better than them. She’s not a likable character, but she is interesting to follow as she continues to stick her foot dog poop everywhere she goes.

For someone who doesn’t want to call attention to herself or get involved in what’s going on, Mary sure does like to play amateur sleuth. It was interesting to see her make a connection between DeMaria Jackson’s murder and Olivia’s disappearance before anyone else did. However, Mary does call attention to herself a lot more than she thinks she did, and she certainly made life very bad for a character who wasn’t involved in the murders. I think the fact that she’s far from being a detective and makes mistakes left and right is realistic, but I do think that the extent of her investigation does require readers to suspend belief as the story continues.

All in all, I think it’s a great story. I also like that it has an open ending, but that there’s enough information that I know exactly what happened to Mary after the final chapter. I’m excited to see what Catherine Dang publishes next because she had me glued to every page of this book.

Mary was an overweight, awkward, bullied girl from the small town of Liberty Lake, Minnesota. She turned her life around with weight loss and was accepted into college at Cornell University. Unfortunately she was expelled from Cornell for attacking another student She arrived home angry and depressed and found work in a grocery store. One of her childhood friends who was a popular, beautiful social media star. disappeared and she became obsessed with trying to find out what happened. The police organized a huge manhunt for her, but ignored the disappearance of a poor Black girl who had disappeared around the same time. The book does touch on police disparities in treatment of victims according to race and class. Although the book was suspenseful, it was not one of my favorites. The characters were not like able and there were many unbelievable actions leading to the resolution of the story.

This is a murder mystery thriller story. Mary has been expelled from Cornell and is now back to small town Minessota. Frustrated at being back to the small town existence she tried so hard to escape, she tries to look for alternatives to take her life back. Then two girls in her town go missing and are suspected to be murdered and Mary unwittingly finds herself in the midst of the storm.

I wasn't too impressed by this one. I got an advance reader copy on the The Book club Girls Facebook group and I initially did not realise it was a murder mystery when I opted for it. It was more like Young Adult fiction. I took a while getting to read it since I had some technical issues sending to kindle. It's a fast paced easy ready although bizarre and far-fetched in parts.

Thanks to Random House and Net galley for the advance copy

ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕪 𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 𝕘𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤, 𝕨𝕚𝕟 𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕫𝕖𝕤.

Nice Girls gives you a deep dark dive into womanhood and the idea do we ever really leave behind our old selves? It’s a gripping small-town tale of young women going missing, those who get overlooked, and the ways we can be blinded by projected images rather than remaining true to ourselves.

I found this to be a super frustrating read for a few reasons. I didn’t like our main character Mary. She made such questionable decisions all while being whiny and pretentious. I get she was an overweight kid who was bullied and ignored but why was that her only character trait? She thought becoming skinny and going to an Ivy League school would make people like her, but she just became bitter and news flash accomplishments mean nothing because they can be taken away in the blink of an eye and then what will you left with? She wasn’t even a good friend or daughter and that shines through as everyone turns their back on her. Most of her troubles comes from her anxiety and desperation and not getting the proper help she needs. The pacing was sooo slowww. The first two thirds of the book dragged on with Mary making wild accusations with zero proof, but the serial killer premise made me stick it out. We finally see some real intense action only for it to die as abruptly as it started. I can’t go into too much detail of the ending without giving it away, but after all Mary went through it went nowhere and I was left thinking what was the point of it all?

I hate to diss on books but this just didn’t do it for me. I’m sure it will appeal to others, especially true crime junkies.

Oh, such high hopes for this one! Normally I love stories with that "high-school mean-girl" type vibe. Normally I love "missing girl" type stories, but this one just did not quite do it for me. I never really felt the connection with Mary. She was not a very likeable person and I found it hard to believe certain situations she got involved in. It started off great, with a creepy Halloween feel, perfect for right now, in October, but then became like a mediocre Lifetime movie as it went on. As a whole, I was mostly entertained, just not fully invested. This was a decent enough debut and I would be interested in the author's next endeavor as there was definitely potential.

Thank you to #NetGalley, Catherine Dang and William Morrow for this ARC.

A thank you to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A solid slow to build suspense story that I enjoyed, but can't say will stick around very long in my mind. So, not life changing, but certainly a fun everyday read that kept me entertained.

"Ivy League Mary" gets expelled from college her senior year and ends up back in her hometown where not much seems to have changed in the three years since she has left. That is until a beautiful young girl, instagram star, and former friend-turned-enemy of Mary's disappears. The mystery starts to unfold just as a second missing young girl is found brutally murdered.

With a full cast of potential suspicious townspeople as suspects, this book is surely a thrill ride. I enjoyed peeling back the layers and trying to figure all all the mysterious subplots and how it would all come together. Although some of the storyline around Mary and her actions seemed a bit of a stretch, I still very much enjoyed this one and would recommend for fans of Megan Miranda or Mary Kibuca.

Thank you to Netgally and the publisher for the opportunity to read this fun thriller for my honest review.

I loved the premise of Nice Girls, as it’s one we see often in the news. When a Black girl from the wrong side of town goes missing no one seems to care, but when a popular, Instagram-famous white girl goes missing, the town is turned upside down to find her. The police kept trying to convince DeMaria’s family that she had just run away, and only seem to care about her disappearance once they realized it may have been connected to Olivia’s. There was so much potential here for the author to explore racism and classism. She touched on it briefly, but I think I was hoping for a deeper dive than we ended up getting.

I enjoyed the pacing of this book and the way the story unfolded. As a reader I really felt like I was uncovering clues along with Mary. I liked the author’s method of presenting the clues without stating them outright.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really connect with Mary as a main character. I didn’t understand her obsession with Olivia, although I know they used to be frenemies. She seemed unnecessarily jaded and hateful towards everyone in her town, and even alienated her one best friend. I think she just read kind of young to me, very hung up on her childhood, and wasn’t easy to empathize with. It was easy to overlook her character for the plot, though.

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for more books by this debut author in the future.

This is a great debut book! From the first chapter I was very intrigued by the main character because she obviously has some issues. “Ivy League Mary” seems very unreliable as a main character, but I was drawn to her. Mary involves herself in two deaths in her little town and every time she thinks she’s got the killer figured out she’s made more mistakes than she can count. There were a few small twists that I really enjoyed in this book and the pacing was great. This was a great book to ease me into some spooky reads!

Thank you to Netgalley for this e-book in exchange for my honest review.

This was a quick and interesting read! The whole book kept me guessing and I couldn’t believe the ending!

A dark psychological thriller that delves into the long-lasting effects of a tortured adolescence.

Mary was meant to finally escape her past and Liberty Lake, Minnesota, when she worked hard to get a scholarship to Cornell University. She thrives at college and is ready for her senior year and graduation when she does something that gets her expelled from school and sent home in disgrace.
Back in Liberty Lake, Mary finds that she can't escape who she really is at her core: angry. She takes a low level job at the local grocery store to start paying off the outstanding student loans, but she and her widowed father stumble through the days and "Ivy League Mary" now fully understands that she is not going anywhere.

Then, an old childhood friend, Olivia Willand, disappears and the town goes bonkers to try to find her. Olivia was everything Mary was not -- rich, beautiful, popular, and a rising social media personality. The discovery of a dismembered arm near the lake sends the community into a frenzy, but the remains are not Olivia but belong to another teenager, DeMaria Jackson. Are these two girls linked somehow? Is there a serial killer in this sleepy town? Mary feels bad about her estrangement from Olivia all these years but old resentments only fuel her guilt so she decides to do a bit of investigating. Mostly Mary only makes matters worse for herself and others, but she does not quit. No spoilers.

The premise was intriguing and the first person narrative by Mary really puts the reader in her head. Sorry to say, but Mary is really quite a mess. I felt sorry for her and also aggravated at other times. She's a hard character to like. This was a decent debut, but the story really never developed the tension or veracity to get to the point of all the angst. I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be social commentary or a murder mystery, and the conclusion was a bit limp after everything that happens. As I always say when exposed to characters like Mary -- she really needs some good therapy! I liked it well enough and will look for this author's next book.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Nice Girls by Catherine Dang is about 22 year old Mary who is expelled from school. She returns home halfway across the country and soon after her childhood friend, Olivia, who she hasn’t been on good terms with for years, goes missing. Mary seems to think that her disappearance is linked to another missing girls case, and the story is basically set around this.
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This book was so boring. SO BORING. Had I not requested to read and review it, I would have DNF’d it. Which I rarely do. It was insanely slow, the pacing was just so off the entire time. Dang’s writing style and I did not mesh well at all. I thought this was one of the most poorly written books I’ve ever read.
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I guess going hand in hand with the writing being awful, so were the characters. They were completely lackluster and one dimensional. Not one character had like, any substance to them. Our protagonist is a straight up pessimist and cares about hardly anything else other than the fact that she used to be SuPeR fAt (this was a gigantic part of her personality and it didn’t sit right with me at all) and isn’t anymore, and the fact that she was bullied or ignored by the popular kids in high school, like YEARS AGO. It could just be me projecting, but I couldn’t care less about the people I wasn’t friends with in high school, especially now, years later, when it literally doesn’t matter.

There were also a lot of inconstancies throughout the book which made me very confused. The entirety of the story was unrealistic and unbelievable. The conversations, the situations, everything didn’t feel organic and it really took me out of the story. I think this book just put me in a reading slump. 1/5.

I genuinely can’t think of anything nice to say. Except it has a dope cover that it doesn’t deserve.

I didn't really take to this book. I couldn't quite identify with Mary or understand her choices and desire to investigate the murders. Overall, I wasn't very invested in anything including who the killer was. Maybe I wasn't in the right headspace for this book but I found it pretty mediocre.

Anyone who has ever not lived up to someone’s expectations can probably relate to “Ivy League Mary”, a small town girl who tries to leave it all behind when she’s accepted to Cornell, but it goes bad in a big way after she’s expelled for assaulting another student.

Living at home and working at a local grocery store, Mary is convinced she can solve the mystery of two murdered local girls. Nearly everyone is a suspect at some point in time, but Mary is also forced to confront the truth about herself. Is she in fact a nice girl? Are there any nice girls left?

Thanks to my partner @harperaudio for my audio copy of Nice Girls. Narrated by Carlotta Brentan, it’s fun and easy to listen to. With not too many characters to keep track of and a plot that moves along, but in a slow-burn kind of way, Catherine Dang’s @dangitcat debut novel is perfect for audio!

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review. Link to Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUNXgTbLe9q/

I really enjoyed this book. It was an easy read and I got right into it. I spent the entire book looking for clues and trying to figure out who was the killer. It had quite the surprising ending!

Nice Girls begins as Ivy League college student Mary returns to her small hometown in disgrace after she’s kicked out of school. At home, she gets a job at the grocery store and reconnects with former friends. But when a local girl goes missing, Mary decides she’s going to get to the bottom of things.

While the whole “main character returns to their small town to face their past and solve a murder” is one of the most familiar tropes in mystery fiction, but I always think it’s a good one. I loved that this book highlighted the terrible disparity of media attention between white victims and victims of color.Mary is convinced that the disappearance of the Instagram-famous (and white) Olivia is connected to the disappearance of black single mother DeMaria. I loved Mary’s relationship with her widowed Dad. She’s put him through a lot and still he’s always there for her. Toward the end, the plot took a turn that I wasn’t happy with, and the ending was also too unresolved for me. But if you are looking for a new adult type of mystery, definitely give Nice Girls a try!

I thought this was a wonderful debut book! The author did such a great job bringing up important topics in did so with ease. The mystery kept me turning pages as I was dying to see how all the characters and the two murdered girls came together. The whole book had an eerie vibe and it was awesome!! I hope to read more great books by Catherine Dang in the future.

It’s pretty much every overachiever’s nightmare to flunk out of college and have to return home to their dead end hometown where not only will their live suck, but everyone they hated in college will know they’ve failed. Yup. And this is exactly what has happened to Mary. In high school, they called her “Ivy League Mary” because she was one of their only classmates to get into an Ivy League school. And it’s the only remarkable thing about the awkward, slightly overweight wallflower that she was back then.

Mary reinvented herself in college. She lost weight, found a new group of friends and was thriving. That is until the “incident.” Now she’s back where she started and life is bizarre. The star football player is an assistant manager at a grocery store and the “it girl” who was also her BFF as a child before they migrated to different social groups has gone missing.

I appreciated the diversity of the characters in this one, it painted a broad picture of the sad fact that often times the pretty blond girl is all over the media when she disappears, but the media pays very little attention to the single black mom who went missing. But beyond that, it was just a good read. Dang paints compelling characters who perfectly capture that awkward stage between high school and adulthood when we are all just trying to figure out who we are. Set against the backdrop of a possible serial killer of course.

Special thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one was out September 14, 2021.

Great, fast paced story.
The main protagonist Mary could be any young Girl today with the same peer problems and reactions. At times I wanted to shake her and other times I wanted to cheer her on.
This story keeps you guessing until the very end.
Thank you to Netgalley, William Morrow/Custom House and the Author Catherine Dang for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up. Nice Girls starts out with a bang - Mary has just been kicked out of Cornell in her final year and is sent back home to Minnesota. Mary wasn’t supposed to come back. She was one of the few who managed to make it out of Liberty Lake after a lifetime of never truly fitting in. The same evening of Mary’s return a childhood friend goes missing and when another body washes ashore Mary is the only one who suspects a serial killer is at large.

I really enjoyed this book. The story was gripping and there are plenty of red herrings to keep the reader guessing whodunnit. Mary wasn’t the most likable main character, though I did feel bad for her a few times, especially when Monica blew up at her. Mary’s heart seemed in the right place when she tried to draw attention to DeMaria’s (largely ignored) disappearance and murder. Very little attention was paid to the black girl who went missing, but when a white influencer disappears the FBI is called in.

The last quarter of the book was a bit weaker than the rest and I thought the ending wrapped up rather quickly. I didn’t like how the author time skipped ahead at the end and it just felt a bit abrupt. I wish we could have seen more of what happens after the killer is exposed.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the advanced copy.