This book was so good! I want to see more from this author in the future!! I couldn't put this book down. What a page turner!!!

Deadly Little Lies by Stephanie DeCarolis (Mystery/Thriller, November 2021) (c/o Netgalley) Juliana lives in the city and has a boyfriend, a good job, and her friends. All that is jeopardized when she receives a text from Jenny. The Jenny from college that she thought was dead. Juliana reconnects with her college friends who also received the same message. Jenny somehow knows secrets that each of them have and is blackmailing them. The story alternates between the past and present as we learn what happened to Jenny and if she is really dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for any of the characters and thought the book was just an okay suspense read.

Unfortunately this book is not for me. It has a very "mean girls" vibe that I personally dislike. Thank you for the opportunity to read this.

Perfect thriller/mystery. If you enjoy a book with a lot of small twists that work within the story this one is for you.

At first sight, Deadly Little Lies appears to be similar to many other contemporary novels: a beautiful and successful heroine who is threatened with losing everything, and a stunning setting such as Manhattan. The dual-timeline approach is also one favoured by many thriller writers. What differentiates Deadly Little Lies from many other thrillers pursuing a similar path, however, is the quality of DeCarolis’ storytelling and the pace the novel keeps, moving our heroine Juliana and the three other female protagonists Emily, Tori and Nessa (friends of Juliana’s who are complicit in an age-old secret) deftly towards a final novelistic climax. Warmly recommended – I cannot wait to see what DeCarolis publishes next! Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for the free ARC that allowed me to read this novel and produce an honest, unbiased review.

Juliana has settled into a nice way of life , working as a lawyer , married to Jason . There is one problem she has not told Jason things about her college days. Nearly 10 years after she and her friends have left college and gone their separate ways they start receiving emails from Jenny , who was at college with them but who had died in an accident at college . Just who is sending these emails the friends cannot decide but try to find out . It culminates in them all going to a reunion party , where everything become clear.

Gripping and suspenseful dual timeline story of secrets and lies amongst friends with privileged and seemingly perfect lives. We follow Jules through the ups and downs as she starts college and unexpectedly makes friends with the "in crowd", and to the present day where the group find themselves being stalked and blackmailed, by someone they thought was dead. Is the blackmailer one of them? Or has someone else somehow found out what they did all those years ago?

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one but really enjoyed it! It was a fast paced, fairly light hearted thriller with a twist at the end that I was not expecting!
4 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Stephanie DeCarolis for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

WHAT I LIKED:
This book was so incredible! I had me hooked right off the bat trying to figure out what really happened and who was acting as "Jenny" throughout the book. I have seen other review compare this book to the Pretty Little Liars, and I couldn't agree more! This is Pretty Little Liars, Adult version! I enjoyed how well Jules's character was written to the point where you weren't just reading about her.. you were her. It put you in her perspective the whole time, both in the "Then" and "Now". The ending!! The person that did it!! Never even crossed my mind as a possibility... I applaud you!

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
There isn't anything that I can say I didn't like.. The whole time the book is focused on Jenny's death only, but yet there is more to it.. Maybe that should have been mentioned earlier? I also believe that adding different view points from all of the girls (Jules, Tori, Emily, and Nessa) would've helped put more of a twist of confusion into the story.

OVERALL/RECOMMENDATION:
This was a book I couldn't put down. It is one that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat questioning everything that is being said right down to the last couple pages... I will highly recommend to every other fan of Mystery Thrillers, and of course fans of Pretty Little Liars.

Three college friends, now 10 years later, all receive messages from one of their group. But Jenny, who sent the messages is dead. They question if she really died and who is sending the messages.

The story is set between two timelines - the friends in their Freshman year at college and the present day.

I enjoyed the book, though I did feel this was more young adult fiction than the suspense novel as portrayed. I also found the ending a little weak.

It was good and I would rate it 3 stars.

Jules is living a picture-perfect life in NYC – on the partner track at a prestigious law firm, married to a handsome, adoring man – when she receives a mysterious email from an old college classmate, Jenny Teller. There’s only one problem – Jenny Teller is dead. Only a few people know what happened the night Jenny died, and now they’re all getting messages from “Jenny” too, threatening to expose the truth and ruin their lives.

“Deadly Little Lies” is a dual timeline thriller – one in the present, and one taking place ten years ago when Jules and her friends were in college. While the plot lacks a bit in terms of originality, the author’s chilling and compelling writing style more than makes up for it. Both timelines are propulsive and suspenseful, with the “Then” timeline really grabbing me. The backstabbing, catty, manipulative mean girl group that Jules was so desperate to belong to was deliciously horrible, especially Emily, the group’s queen bee.

Many thanks to NetGalley and HQ Digital for providing me an advance copy of this book.

I absolutely loved the first book of this author and loved this one as well. Such a great written, that brings her characters to life, the storyline has lots of twist and turns in it and it is really gripping.

I really enjoyed this. Despite being in my 40's I do think this is probably aimed more at younger adults as it reminded me so much of the Netflix series Pretty Little Liars. The character of Emily being almost identical to the TV show Alison. Being a massive fan of the TV series I loved all of the similarities.
The story is told in a dual timeline of a group of girls during their college years and then years later after they have all drifted apart they find themselves back in touch after receiving mysterious threatening messages about what they did back in college.
Despite guessing the "twist" and it not being the most jaw dropping of thrillers I still really enjoyed it and found it a fun read as I really missed Pretty Little Liars when it finished so thank you for kind of reigniting those characters for me #Deadly#LittleLies #NetGalley

I loved this book, stayed up late two nights to finish it! Told by way of a dual timeline - college days and current day - the story is fast moving and each of the main characters is written about so well that I became really invested in all of them. I felt the story kept a good pace all the way to the last page, I genuinely struggled to put it down. I will certainly read more from this author xx thank you Netgalley for enabling me to read this

With the perfect, doting husband, and a successful career at a law firm in Manhattan, Jules thinks she has it all, until a nasty email sends everything crashing down, bringing her past roaring back. Ten years earlier, when Jules goes to college and its "in" with her class' golden girls, she thinks everything is going to be great, but one night, something goes horribly, horribly wrong. And the girls make a pat to keep in a secret. But now, someone is determined to bring that secret out into the light. And the girls are afraid their lives will never recover if their secret comes out, because this secret comes with a deadly twist.

This story is told along two timelines, the present day and 10 years ago, when Jules and her friends were freshmen in college.

This book is full of suspense, as the story is full of mystery and drama along both of the timelines that we get to see. We know that something horrific happens to a girl named Jenny in the past timeline, but it's the waiting game that really brings out the suspense that kept me turning pages, as I waited for the big reveal. And this book really delivered a couple twists that were worth the wait. However, I have to say I wasn't stunned by the big reveal. I had an inkling about the "who," but the details were actually very good. This author is very creative so it came as no surprise that she had a few tricks up her sleeve!

I enjoyed getting to know Jules and her group of friends. Jules was someone to root for, even though she was a little cringy at times. A typical young woman trying to navigate to social moors of college and the post-graduate world in which no one quite fits in all the way. Her friends were all the same way, but I found myself drawn to them as well - Tori and Nessa. It was like a Mean Girls reality show I couldn't look away from.

And yes, there's way more than enough drama to go with the thrills and chills!

Overall, this was a great mystery/thriller that I devoured in a couple of days. I was so invested in each of the storylines, I couldn't put it down. This is an author I will be following!

When attorney Juliana Daniels receives a seemingly ordinary text from an old s=college friend saying “Remember Me?”, she is stunned. The name on the screen is Jenny Teller –but Jenny can’t have sent that message, because Jenny is dead, and has been for 10 years …
When Jules finds out that her other college friends have all received the same message, and when the messages turn to blackmail threatening to reveal their secrets, the group of old friends know that they need to find out who is behind this, and revisit that night when Jenny died. Who is lying? Who can be trusted?
Overall, this is the sort of thriller that will keep you reading because you want to know who was sending the texts – is Jenny really dead? Is somebody playing a bizarre joke? Does her husband know something even though she’s never spoken about Jenny & what happened that night …
The characters are quite stereotypical: the busy “Mommy”, the doting husband, the fat friend, the “Queen Bee” … all come from different backgrounds and are drawn together at college/university. I didn’t really warm to any of them, though I did appreciate Jules doing the right thing in the end with respect to her corrupt lawyer-boss!
The dual timeline works well, but it lacks some of the suspense or excitement that would turn it from an ok read to an amazing one.

I’m afraid that I just didn’t warm to this one. The idea of an event happening in the past to a group of high school or college kids, that they keep secret and then comes back to haunt them, is just too cliché unless some genuinely new twist is introduced.

Sadly, the exciting twist didn’t materialise, I didn’t really warm to anyone, didn’t trust the right person and didn’t care about the central character.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, HQ for an arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Reconnecting with friends from the past is usually a time filled with excitement and nostalgia. Unless of course the friend you receive the message from has been dead for years. This is the situation in which our protagonist Juliana finds herself.

Deadly Little Lies is a book set in the “Now” (living a high-powered City lifestyle) and “Then” (a college campus where you’re desperate to belong). I mostly enjoyed seeing the “Then” situation unfold and the book has me hooked!

Audiobook Review
This was a solid thriller, but definitely started as a slow burn as I acclimatised to the narrator, characters and writing style, and also the dual timelines.
I love dual timelines but this one took some getting used to, but I'm not really sure why. Sometimes I wouldn't catch which time I was listening to so I missed some content.
There were a lot of characters, as I expected in a book about a high school incident, so the ending was a little less impactful for me.
The narrator started off rather monotonous but warmed to the role well later.
I love a gripping audiobook and with the right narrator (and time!), I can listen to the entire book in just a couple of days but this one didn't really keep my interest through its entirety.

3.5 stars
I enjoyed the suspense of the story. I didn’t know who to trust thought out the story. We’re Jules “friends” behind the blackmail? Who else knows what happened back at college besides them?

Told between the present, where Jules and her friends are being blackmailed about their past, and the past of their time at school leading up to the terrible event we slowly get to learn what happened all those years ago and why Jules carries guilt about an event at school.

Jules made a lot of poor choices in her adult life, so it was hard to stand behind her and hope things worked out for her. She was slightly infuriating and her husband deserved better.