Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. I'm The Girl tells the story of Georgia, a beautiful teen girl who is just figuring out who she wants to be, who stumbles upon body in the woods of another beautiful teen girl. Georgia teams up with Nora, the dead girl's sister to find out what happened to her and discovers a world of power, intrigue and abuse at the top levels of her world and beyond.

Courtney Summers creates characters that can be very unlikable. This was another twisty thriller that You just can't see where it is going until the end.

All sixteen-year-old Georgia Avis wants is everything, but the poverty and hardship that defines her life has kept her from the beautiful and special things she knows she deserves. When she stumbles upon the dead body of thirteen-year-old Ashley James, Georgia teams up with Ashley's older sister Nora, to find the killer before he strikes again, and their investigation throws Georgia into a glittering world of unimaginable privilege and wealth--and all she's ever dreamed.

Courtney Summers' books are...different. Provocative, I'd say. The material is always kind of hard to read, but at the same time you can't tear your eyes away and can't stop thinking about the book after you do finally put it down. Ultimately, I loved this one. It left you with a lot to think about...but that's what's important, right?

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I could not get into or really follow “I’m The Girl.” I love thrillers and mysteries, but this provocative story didn’t get me hooked like that. It was dark and handled difficult topics, but that was not really an issue for me. This book just seemed a little too meta for me so perhaps I am just not the intended audience. 2 star read for this one. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy for review.

While the twists of this book didn't surprise me, I still couldn't look away. The main character feels like an unreliable narrator and unlikeable in many ways. However, she reminded me a lot of my adolescent self and the societal themes explored made my skin crawl in a way I look for in thrillers. She's the type of girl who's behavior will have adults going "what were you thinking?," and since we get her POV... we see exactly that. If you read and enjoyed Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson, this one reminded me of that. This is not a book everyone would enjoy, but it will stay with me. I listened to the audio and loved the narrator who did the voice acting on this.

LGBTQ+ rep: F/F relationship with main character

I loved Sadie by Courtney Summers so I knew I had to sign up for this ARC. Please check the trigger warnings if possible. Grooming/Sa being a big trigger. I liked Georgie even though she was a bit naive. She definitely wanted people to notice and adore her. After she found the dead Ashley James that was raped and murdered, she tried to turn life around... but still haunted by what happened that night. Summers knows how to deliver heartbreak, sadness and gripping all in one.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Georgia has a dream to be an Aspera girl. It’s a pretty girl who works in hospitality at the fancy Aspera hotel in town. But I’m not sure she quite understands what’s in the job description. It looks glamorous on the outside looking in, but has hard Jeffrey Epstein vibes on the inside. And it’s actually on her way to the Aspera for the first time that she finds the dead body of Ashley James, a 13-year-old local girl.

This launches Georgia into a quest to find the killer. She teams up with Ashley’s sister and together they try to get to the bottom of it. And while Georgia does land a job at the Aspera, she is quickly discovering what really happens there. What if being a pretty girl actually makes your life worse than if you never qualified for the Aspera girl distinction? To top all this off, Georgia is also realizing that she’s in love with Ashley’s sister, Nora.

I’m the Girl is definitely a coming of age story. Georgia is figuring out who she is and also figuring out that the world is a harsh place. She has a strong voice as a character and I did like her. I wanted to like this one more, but there was almost too much going on, and I even found it hard to sum it all up in a quick book review.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one is out now.

Super impressed by the writing but I wasn’t as wowed by the story as I was hoping to be. Ever since the book Sadie came out, I have been keeping my eye out for a Courtney Summers book to read. I’m not normally big on reading books that have a bunch of trigger warnings, but when a book in some ways mirrors the Jeffrey Epstein case, I’m not surprised it has tough to read subjects like sexual assault, grooming, and physical abuse.

Part mystery, part queer novel, this story really walks the line of young adult and adult. This has content and subject matter that all may not be comfortable letting their average teenager read (and I don't mean the queer relationships in the book either!) This book walks the line, but ultimately, it did appeal to both adults and young adults, especially those who are queer or questioning.

Running with a lot of the adult themes, including inappropriate relationships, murder, sexual harassment/assault and gaslighting, all of which occur with frequency in this book. It makes you feel uncomfortable as you read it, as many adults take advantage of the naivety of a teenaged girl, and definitely try to sway her way of thinking and her own morals, to their own advantage.

While parts of this book made me feel yucky, it was a thought provoking book, that checked all the boxes for entertaining, thought provoking and social commentary, and I would recommend it to others that want to be challenged in the best possible way.

DNF Review - I'm really sorry but I don't think the blurb was good enough to understand how dark and brutal this story was. I was expecting a typical murder mystery story like Good Girl's Guide To Murder and I can't deal with rape/murder of a 13 year old kid and someone said an on page rape later. It's too much for me. I've rated what I did read.

At sixteen, Georgia Avis has big dreams, but she's held back by a life of poverty. While walking alongside the road, she discovers the body of thirteen-year-old Ashley James, the daughter of the local sheriff. Georgia is hit by a car during everything, and her memories of the incident are jumbled. But she teams up with Ashley's older sister, Nora, to try to figure out what happened. All trails seem to lead to Aspera, a beautiful resort where Georgia's late mother once worked.

Ugh, I feel terrible as I love Courtney Summers, but this one just didn't work for me. Her writing is as lyrical and gorgeous as ever, but I didn't care for the plot, which dragged and had a lot of issues. I really enjoyed the writing in this book, that there was a queer relationship between Georgia and Nora, and that it featured a mystery to solve. The rest of it... not so much.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Nora and Georgia has no depth. It's thrown at us, but we see no development with them, or really any other characters in the book. I wanted to care about them--and everyone else--but it was hard. Georgia honestly came across as frustrating beyond words. Her decisions made me want to scream. Aspera--this strange, fancy resort--and its owners--loom over Georgia's life. She's obsessed with it, but we are never sure why, and her focus on working there is borderline insanity. So many of the problems in this book could have been avoided if everyone would have just been honest with each other from the beginning (including Georgia's family)--this is a huge pet peeve of mine in literature.

GIRL bills itself as a cautionary story about the power of the wealthy and the power males hold over women, but it adds nothing new. If it's focused on sexism and patriarchy, Georgia does not seem to want to fight those things--if anything, she lets things happen to her and spends a lot of time caring what the men around her think of her. Again-this just adds to the confusing angle of Georgia and Nora's relationship.

Overall, I had a hard time caring about any of the characters or the story here. It was confusing, seemed full of plot holes, and then, after everything, gave us a vague ending. So frustrating. 2 stars for me, but many others liked it more.

I received a copy of this book from Wednesday Books and Netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

I’m The Girl is one of those heavy-hitting books that talks about very difficult topics. To me, the vibes of this book were like if Euphoria was a thriller. I recommend this for fans of Mindy McGinnis’s works.

Courtney Summers does it again! Like Sadie, this book had me guessing and re-guessing throughout the twisted chapters. I very much enjoyed the character development and the many mysteries woven into the narrative. This books is seriously thrilling.

Absolutely amazing. The character relationships, the reality of being a naive teenager in a world out to get you, and the dreams of living against your parents wishes, everything so utterly revealed behind the mask.

Courtney Summers does it again with a knife-sharp thriller, tense plotting, chilling revelations, and desperate characters, Loved loved loved it

Courtney Summers does an amazing job of conveying what it feels like to be a teenage girl sometimes in ways that is both impressive - because accurate - and deeply depressing - because accurate. This book follows that trend.

There was a lot of this story that I actually really enjoyed. The characters were written really well and seemed fully fleshed out. I felt for a lot of them when they had horrific things happen to them. I also really like the premise of this story. However, so much just fell flat. I hated the way this story was presented. I think these are really difficult topics and I hate the way they were handled. A lot of this story is men abusing their power but I didn’t like the way the main character reacted to that abuse of power. Sort of made her seem complicit. I understand that she is underage and oftentimes doesn’t understand what’s going on but I found it odd that she seemed to make advances towards men to gain the upper hand. Maybe that is what the author intended, no one is truly innocent? I’m not sure. I felt uncomfortable at times reading it but did like some of the twists and turns.

What a whirlwind!! This was one of those easy to read books for me - even when things got chaotic and messy, I was so invested I just had to keep going.

Things I loved about I’m the Girl” are:
- The plot was unique and interesting. The second I saw the book summary I couldn’t stop thinking about reading it, and there were lots of twists and turns I didn’t expect throughout.
- Queer characters! A WLW relationship! A queer main character in the middle of a heteronormative town/culture who’s trying to fight back!
- I felt this had a pretty quick pace - things developed quickly and I never felt like I was endlessly reading about the same thing.

However, while I loved the premise and the pace of the book, there were some issues I had with it:
- There were so many twists and new details added all the time that I found it hard to keep track of what the main plot was, where characters and relationships were at, and even how it ended. I think the ending was intentionally left vague, but I still had no idea what to think and was left without a sense of closure on Georgia’s story.
- At times it felt like elements were added more for shock value or to make the reader uncomfortable than to push forward the narrative or the message of the book. This deals with some very sensitive, difficult to read topics, and not subtly - it really hits you over the head with them.

Overall, I enjoyed reading and would love to check out more of Courtney Summers’ work, but felt this could have been developed/refined a bit more to have a bigger impact. 3/5 stars for me!

I was super excited to receive another Courtney Summers ARC since I absolutely loved The Project. I'm the Girl was a very harrowing read. I anticipated some triggers but this was hard to read at points. There were parts that pulled me in and kept me reading but there were a couple chapters throughout that felt dragged out. Still a good read.

I am a sucker for books that cover heavy topics, and this one did not disappoint. Summers does an excellent job tackling everything in this book to make it a read that will make you feel, but not make you uncomfortable. Georgia is a great main character who unfortunately doesn’t know much, and that plays a role in her attitude and personality traits. All around, I think Summers executed the story amazingly and everything developed nicely into a great psychological thriller.