Liked this Young Adult mystery, who doesn't get interested about two dead Homecoming Queens! Seems this is setup for a sequel which sill gladly read!

ok this book was literally so predictable like every single twist was predictable every plot point was predictable sorry to those who blurbed this but i'm just built different ig i hated how stagnant the characters seemed to be in their own story and also just the way the story flowed idk it's not memorable or special

Pretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne is a quick, fun homecoming whodunnit that is perfect for fans of amateur yet intelligent teenage sleuths like Veronica Mars &/or Nancy Drew.
Cecelia Ellis is forced to move in with her elusive grandmother that’s the coastal town’s famous writer after the tragic loss of Cecelia’s mother, even though she’s never been close to her grandmother. As Cecelia adjusts to her new life & begins making friends with some of the high school elite, her life is once again turned upside as she discovers the high school’s queen bee dead in the school pool. Cecelia’s coping mechanism for navigating all the tragedy in her life is trying to become her very own Veronica Mars or Nancy Drew if you will. This is a town full of mystery in its’ history & there are many twists & turns along the way. It turns out that this homecoming resembles a tragic case from the town’s past as well as the plot to a famous book by Cecelia’s grandmother.
This story packs quite a punch with so many storylines in such a quick book. It kept my brain entertained & I loved the fast pace. I wasn’t able to solve everything so I always appreciate & applaud when that happens!
I also have always loved watching Murder She Wrote even though I wasn’t even alive when most of it aired. So I adored that the author took inspiration from that.
If you are in the mood for a fast young adult mystery, then Pretty Dead Queens is the perfect book for you!

Pretty Dead Queens comes out October 4, 2022!

Massive thanks to NetGalley & Random House Children’s for giving me the opportunity to read an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains murder, death of a parent/child, grief, gore, violence, car accident & underaged drinking/smoking.

I will post on my social media as it gets closer to release date & add links once I do.

“I look like Bella F*cking Swan. They’re going to eat me alive .”A young girl returns to the town her mom grew up in and finds herself entangled in a current and decades old murder mystery. Her grandmother also happens to be a local celebrity/ mystery author. I did enjoy the book despite some of the very cringe language (“ok boomer”🤦🏾‍♀️is said way more than anyone should have to read).

Thank you to NetGalley for a free eArc in exchange for a honest review.

2.5 stars~
It’s written very messy. I’ve read much better ya mysteries. I didn’t think it was BAD, I just felt it was not great. It started off good, then about 25% in with still no murder I got bored, then it finally happened and it just went downhill from there. There was a lot of characters introduced all at once with not a lot of development. The characters fell flat for me and the writing had me rolling my eyes several times. It doesn’t help that every bit of dialogue or action felt like it was trying hard to feel suspenseful when it really wasn’t. This book didn’t come across as a murder mystery to me, just more like a ya contemporary that happened to have an extremely annoying girl investigating a murder. Really the only thing I enjoyed about it was my curiosity on if I guessed who did it, which I guessed exactly what happened very early on.

Pretty Dead Queens is a pretty solid young adult mystery. There were some predictable parts, but quite a few twists and turns I never saw coming. I would definitely recommend this as it is one of the better YA “who dunnits” that I’ve read in the last few years.

I received this arc from NetGalley.

If you like your mysteries easy and your reads a walk through the park, this is it. Fans of YA murder where everything comes just went it needs, there's and everyone loves the MC will love this ride through a small cliff town in California.

DNF at 50%. I was very intrigued by the story and plot. However, there was WAY too many characters to keep track and relationships between these characters. Almost everyone at the school was highly unlikable, which I think was purposeful, but again, I couldn’t keep whos who straight.

Lastly, even at 50%, Cecilia’s motives for getting involved make absolutely no sense to me. She says she wants to do it to channel her grief, but it just didn’t seem reasonable.

I did enjoy this book, but it kind of fell a little flat for me because I had such high expectations for it. It was good, and I’d recommend, but it had so much more potential I think.

I had to DNF this book at 20%. The story was very intriguing to me, but y fortunately the characters were so cheesy yet maturely written-they did not read as teens to me, but adults trying to talk like teens. I loved the setting, and the idea of an author using the school’s history as inspiration for a book.

I am impressed by how real the teens felt in this book. They actually read like teens, not younger or older like in many YA books that I read. I enjoyed the prose, not flowery but not overly simple. I was immersed into the story pretty quickly despite having seen variations of this type of plot over and over again. The town and it’s residents feel lively and the twists and turns made me want to continue on to find out who the killer was. I think this book will be enjoyable to people of all ages and they should give it a try.

I’ve been following Alexa’s career for a long time, and this book is my favorite and maybe her best. Pretty Dead Queens is a ripe mixture of Scream x Fear Street x teenage sleuthing resulting in a joyride of red herrings, twists, swimming pools and shadowy Victorian Mansions. Oh, and estranged grandmas.

I haven’t had this much fun reading a YA Thriller in a while. Alexa meticulously places all the clues to her “whodunnit” there in text, this isn’t a Miss Marple tale where you’re missing vital pieces of information and it only comes together on the last page. That’s what makes PDQ so enjoyable—the act of playing junior sleuth alongside Cecilia (our MC).

The secrets in this small town are to die for. Are you ready to take a swim?

Ooh this was GOOD! If you’re a fan of Holly Jackson or Karen McManus this is the book for you!

When Celia’s mother dies she has to move to Seaview in with her grandmother, Maura, an infamous crime writer whose most popular novel is based on a real murder of a young girl named Caroline.

Celia begins to make friends and form romantic connections when another murder takes place, exactly like the murder of Caroline. Celia begins an armature investigation and there are so many twists and turns along the way that keep you guessing right up until the very end!

As the reader you’re never really sure who to complete trust and a plethora of new information is fed to you as the book progresses, making it an extremely enthralling read.

5 stars!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you NetGalley and Crown for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Pretty Dead Queens is a superb read. I was engrossed from the beginning and found the story to be completely captivating!

Cecelia, I loved her. She is fierce, strong and real go-getter!
She throws herself into the murder investigation of the homecoming queen who is murdered! She is determined to find out what really happened.
But the more Cecelia digs into the town’s secrets, the more she worries that her own mystery might not have a the ending she is hoping for.
And she soon discovers that Seaview is not the town she thought it was.

A gripping, chilling, intense, thrilling and absorbing story that I didn’t want to put down!
Finishing the novel was exciting and surprising.
I was not expecting the contents of the Epilogue and this reflects the plot in its entirety.
The twists and turns added to the mystery that we are all trying to find answers to.
 
This is an extremely well written story with an intricate plot and skillfully drawn characters. It's a real page turner roller coaster of a ride with twists and turns that seem to spin out of control. The ending was explosive and totally unexpected.
A superb read. I was engrossed from the beginning and found the story of completely captivating until the end.

I loved everything about this story, particularly how it kept me absolutely thrilled until the very end.
After being completely captivated by this book, I honestly don't know what to do with myself now that it's over.

I've been wanting to read this book for so long now. And now I'm wishing I would have have waited so I can read again for the first time.

“I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”

Random House Children's/rown Books for Young Readers,
I can't thank you enough for this ebook approval.
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!
Can't wait to share with others!

Love this book! can’t get over how much I loved this book. Each character was so well fleshed out that I felt like I could picture them right away. Twists from beginning to end and then more twists on top of it. This book would very easily make a great thriller movie with very little work. Please please please make this a series whether you have to go the prequel route or keep Cecilia as the protagonist.

After seeing that Alexa Donne had published another mystery, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Pretty Dead Queens, and the anticipation did not disappoint! I had a hard time putting this book down once I started it and couldn't finish it fast enough. Once again, Donne has assembled a wonderful cast of characters in this whodunit set in a sleepy seaside town where nothing is what it seems.

Cecelia arrives in small town Northern California, where she'll be living with her estranged grandmother following the death of her mother. Shortly after she begins to adjust to her new life, she finds a dead body that appears to be recreating another murder that had happened decades before, permanently glorified in the memory of pop culture thanks to her grandmother's bestselling books. Cecelia propels herself into the center of the investigation as she looks for something to focus on in the absence of her dead mother, and before long, she finds herself in too deep.

A compelling read throughout! Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children's for the ARC!

This book feels like a Hallmark whodunit — in the best kind of way. The town is vibrant, its citizens are interesting, and there's lore everywhere. Not only did this book have a ton of supporting characters, but they were multi-dimensional and well-developed. Overall, I really liked Cecilia (although I cringed over a lot of her decisions) and the plot kept me guessing for quite some time.

My.
Goodness.

SO. MANY. MOTIVES. OMG.

Literally kept me guessing until the climax. As soon as I hit that halfway point, I was caught up in a whirlwind of spicy secrets and insane (but in a good way) drama. My suspect list just grew and grew and never really narrowed in until the end. And then I was jaw-on-the-floor, knocked-off-the-couch kind of impressed. All the pieces were there but SO WELL DISGUISED to me that NOTHING turned out the way I expected (well except one little tidbit but I think that one was supposed to be obvious).

The major characters had me so invested. Alexa is so skilled at bringing believable teens (well, characters of all age, really) into her stories that I feel like I'm actually in a high school watching real teen drama unfold. Of course I'm an adult and I can't verify how much high school has changed since I was there, but I get the sense of everyone being very acutely adjusted for the current times, rather than reading about adults making adult decisions while stuck in children shapes.

Cecelia was an absolute treat. I never once felt like she wasn't real even though we have very different personalities. The only thing I wish I got to see more from her was her "girly" style she claimed to have had in SoCal.

Ben... oh boy I liked him straight from the start. Which made me a little biased when it came to the love triangle but come on, who can resist a boy who looks cute in glasses?

Unfortunately I can't truly remember if I guessed who was going to die. I don't think I did.... I remember having it down to 2 possible victims but I think the set up was perfect to keep me on my toes.

And lastly, I did notice a trend again in this book where things were narrated when they didn't need to be in order for the reader to make the connections. But overall it didn't take me out of the story all too much so I just carried on reading to that extremely juicy ending!

Cecelia moves to a small coastal town with her estranged, best selling murder mystery grandmother after the losing her mother to cancer. However, not only is Cecilia's grandmother famous, so is the town, for the murder of the Homecoming Queen that was the basis for Cecilia's grandmother's first bestseller.

Shortly after Cecelia settles into her new school, a copy cat murder takes place and Cecelia takes the case on to solve the murder and other mysterious situations in the town.

I breezed through this, loving the twists and turns and yeah, I love the story of a self proclaimed teen detective. Really enjoyed this.

firstly i want to start off by thanking netgalley & random house children ‘s for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

this book was a roller coaster wow. i have read lots of mysteries in my life but this one was MESSY, in a good and bad way.

i think it does far down the predictable line because i was able to sense one of the plot twist from the beginning but the other was also so unexpected, and even though i was suspicious, i was SHOCKED.

in this book we have messy characters who lie, lie, lie, because what’s a murder mysteries without a few secrets right? we also have a love triangle, small town drama, grief explored (kinda? sorta. i think we would’ve got more if you know, there wasn’t a murder to solve), and did i mention drama already? because WHEW.

the reason for the 3 stars isn’t because the book was bad in any way, i thoroughly enjoyed in and even got to pull out my playlist to fully get into the story, but i was left feeling kind of just empty? i don’t know. i think it’s because i’m a little disappointed the book went the way i knew it was gonna go. so predictable? yes. messy? totally. entertaining? definitely.

this is my first read from this author but i definitely am inspired to pick up ‘the ivies’ since it’s another fan favorite. i’m super thankful i was picked for early access of this book & i know so many true crime nerds are gonna enjoy this in january as much as i did!!! i would definitely love to hear more from these characters in a future book, if we ever got one.

also the representation? did i mention this book has lesbians because this book has LESBIANS!!! wish we got to see more of my fav duo but it’s understandable on why we didn’t.

overall rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️