So unfortunately while I was very excited to read this book, I wasn't able to read it all before it was archived. However, what I did read definitely made me want to read more.

A digital copy of this book was provided to me by NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books. The opinions are my own and freely given.

This story is told in 3 different timelines, NOW, 1988 and beginning in the 1949 coming up through now.

NOW - Charlie goes to a seaside vacation spot with her niece. 1988 - Charlie was at this spot with her family, met a "friend" and her life changed. 1949 - Derek is born.

So, this story goes through 1988 Charlie, meeting her new friend, Emily, and a disastrous night, that changes her young life. It flashes forward to NOW as Charlie returns to the spot where it all started. She is tasked with unburying an item that was buried that night. Along the way, a 15-year-old girl is missing, and Charlie can't help but feel that if she could only find this girl, she might get some redemption for that night.

I really had a hard time enjoying the book. I felt like the beginning was slow and it really didn't start to ramp up until about 60% through. We don't know what terrible thing had happened all those years ago until then. We don't really know the story of Charlie and Emily, or why the story of Derek is brought in, (although we can guess). I struggled with this book. For me, it was just ok, but someone else might love it.

“If you want to stop her, find what you buried together.”

Charlie returns to the seaside town of Hithechurch, England after receiving this cryptic message. When she was eleven years old, she invented a story about Stitch-Faced Sue in order to entertain her friends. However, this spooky tale changed the course of their lives. She returns under the guise of researching the town’s folklore. Who knows about what she and her friends did all those years ago? And, why have so many girls gone missing in this town? Could Stitch-Faced Sue actually be real?

I listened to the audiobook while following along with the ebook. I really enjoyed the audio, which was narrated by Mary Woodvine. I highly recommend listening to this one.

This slow-burn thriller is part mystery, part ghost story, and sprinkled with a little bit of horror. It includes a gullible protagonist, a predictable plot with non-existent policing, and convenient reveals. Despite these issues, I did enjoy this book! If you go into this knowing what to expect, you won’t be disappointed.

However, please avoid reading the Goodreads synopsis, as it will spoil the book!

3.5/5 stars rounded down

Expected publication date: 4/18/23

Thank you to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Dreamscape Media for the ARC of Games for Dead Girls in exchange for an honest review.

The story was great! It did start out slower but once it picked up I really enjoyed it and didnt want to put it down. This book had all of my favorite things to see i a thriller. Unreliable narrator, Dual timelines, and multiple POVS. I loved the ghost story part of this thriller. It was so creepy and atmospheric that I couldn't read it at night. The twists really shocked me too which isn't something that always happens since I am an avid mystery/thriller reader but they really blew my mind and I loved how they tied the story together. Overall a really good horror/thriller story.

DNF

It unfortunately had so many different timelines going on that I found it hard to follow. This isn't a book problem this is a me issue. I just have a hard time with multiple timelines happening, which I was not aware was the route that the book was going to take.

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review, It just wasn't' the book for me.

I was really looking forward to reading this novel, and while it was well-written, it missed the mark a bit for me. My main issue was that it just took a little too long for me to really get into it.
Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the advance copy to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC.

I thought this book had a lot of potential, but unfortunately missed the mark for me. The storyline progressed too slowly for me to really feel invested. I enjoyed the alternating timelines, but I wish it had been a bit more fast-paced and exciting. I was happy to find that it really picked up closer to the end.

The premise of this story is really intriguing, Sarah is returning to Hithechurch to do some research on local folklore for a book she's writing, and she's also there to look into some suspicious messages she's been getting about something horrible that happened in her past. When she arrives she finds out a young girl has gone missing, and that many more had gone missing before her and she begins her own investigation into what happened to her.

While this book does have a slower start, and one of the timelines left me confused as to how it fits into what was happening in the story now, this book did keep me intrigued enough to keep reading. The story of Charlie and Emily sucked me in and once I figured out how the third timeline fit, things began to come together for me and made a lot more sense. Then once we got to the end of the story when everything starts coming together and making sense the pace picks up, I got completely sucked in and wanted so much more once the story was over.

Missing girls, dark secrets, the past and dangerous caves.

Charlie and her niece Katie go to Hithechurch, England where Charlie is researching a book on local folklore. For Charlie it will be like coming home. When Charlie was a girl she met Emily, a girl her age with an abusive father. The girls perform a ritual to summon "Stitch Face Sue" an urban legend believed to haunt the town seeking revenge for her murder. Their ritual goes horribly, horribly wrong. Now, Emily has written a memoir about what happened when they were young, blaming Charlie for everything. Charlie wants to clear her name and find proof that Emily was the one to blame. But soon the past will collide with her present. While doing her research, Charlie learns of missing girls and feels as if she is being watched...

I had both the book and the audiobook. I thought the narrator did a fine job. The synopsis was very intriguing, and I had high hopes for this book. I think my hopes were a little too high. For me this book was slow in parts, and it dragged my enjoyment down. This is a case of me struggling with slower books. I will say that the last third of the book really picked up and was quite good.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but believe I would have enjoyed it even more if it weren't so slow in parts. Others are enjoying this book more than I did, so please read their reviews as well.

#GamesforDeadGirls #NetGalley #JenWilliams

It took me about 50 pages to get into it due to the slow start but after the 50 page mark I was completely immersed! I finished in two days, staying up late and not wanting to put it down.

I enjoyed the multiple timelines and switching POVs. I also loved the unreliable narrator, one of my fave tropes in horror/mystery novels! The characters were complex and well developed as well. The setting and writing was atmospheric and creepy; I always enjoy a good ghost story or local legend. I did predict one of the major plot twists very early on but one or two of the twists managed to shock me!

Overall a captivating and fantastic horror/mystery novel which I really enjoyed! The story kind of gave me the vibes of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn so I’d recommend if you enjoy her work or you enjoy reading about ghost stories/urban legends

Rating: 4.5 stars

This was a new author for me. This book was very interesting and very informative. I liked it but I thought it could be a little more suspenseful.

Thank you net galley for letting me read this book.

A strong story that brings together it and legends, missing girls, and created monsters into one mystical story.

Special thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I had high hopes for this book, but I couldn't mesh with it at all. I'm sorry to say I skimmed a lot because I found myself really bored.

The writing in this was pretty solid, but the plot really did not work for me. The twists, for the most part, were obvious fairly early on, and the overall messaging was not at all my favorite. Also, this felt (as most thrillers do these days) like 2-3 stories stuck on top of one another, in wildly coincidental and silly ways.

"Exploring the fine line where supernatural ends and real human monstrosity begins, Games for Dead Girls is a haunting, dark read from award-winning author Jen Williams.

In the vein of Jennifer Hillier and Alex North, and told in alternating timelines, a ritualistic game turns deadly for two young girls, but it will be years before they must face the true horrors of their past.

When Charlie was eleven, she created a monster...

For Charlie and her niece Katie, it's supposed to be a quiet holiday in the peaceful, out-of-the-way seaside town of Hithechurch, England. Charlie is researching a book on the folklore of the area, and the gloomy sea and dangerous caves seem to offer up plenty of material, while Katie is just there to run wild and get some fresh air.

But Charlie's research reveals a deeper, darker secret, one that uncovers her own, carefully hidden past. Because young women are going missing again: a teenage girl snatched from the beach in broad daylight, and before that, other girls through the decades have vanished from the area, their families left with no answers and no bodies to bury.

Charlie's creation was a thing of felt, straw, fury, and a rusty pair of scissors in the dark. It couldn't be her monster. Could it? Charlie is set on discovering the truth about the girls' disappearances, but she's about to encounter a force of pure, obsessive malevolence that threatens to destroy anything in its path."

Folklore and monsters made real, YES!

I had high hopes for this one, however, I did find it hard to follow in areas. There was multiple timelines which I found to be rather confusing. Not my favourite to navigate in a book.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review.*

(2.5 stars rounded up)
When Charlie was a teenager in the 1980s she went on vacation to a seaside town with her family and spent a lot of time telling wild stories to her new friend Emily. One of these stories turns into something sinister and one night the girls take it too far. Present day, Charlie returns to the town with her niece Katie to investigate the recent disappearance of a teenager to see if its connected to what she and Emily did. Games for Dead Girls is a mystery/thriller told from three different perspectives/timelines that all converge at the climax.

There are a lot of things I enjoyed about this story - I love flashbacks and multiple POVs, especially when we're not initally told how they fit together. I thought the reveals were well done without being overly predictable, The writing was really well done and the overall concept of the story immediately sold me.

This is definitely a slow burn, so for the first 2/3 of the book I had a hard time picking it back up, but in the last third when things started to pick up I couldn't put it down. I can't explain the things that I didn't enjoy without spoilers, so I'll just say that some of the actions taken by the final villain seemed very convoluted and didn't make a lot of sense to me. This book definitely had a LOT of potential, but it feels like the author started writing this without a clear vision of where they wanted it to go. That being said, I would still read from this author again.

I wanted this book to be better than it was. Slow moving, and at points, the story just dragged on and on. However, if I look aside all of that - the story of Charlie, Emily and....the others was quite good.

Three timelines, with two narrators, this story explores friendship, folklore and what happens when people grow up and still have to reckon with their mistakes.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A dark tale of friendship and the nightmares that haunt us long after we’ve grown up.

When Charlie goes to Hithechurch, England with her niece to do some research on a book she’s writing about local tales, she is confronted with a poster of Cheryl, a girl who disappeared during a family holiday to Hithechurch. The mystery of Cheryl’s disappearance draws Charlie in as her own nightmares and fears resurface to haunt her, because Charlie has been to Hithechurch before, and something awful happened.

The stand out of this book is the way the tale unfolds to reveal pieces of Charlie’s previous encounter with Hithechurch and its occupants. This is ultimately a tale of self-forgiveness and shines a light on the monsters that lurk just out of focus. I’d recommend for fans of gothic horror.

Thanks to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and Jen Williams for this read.

Thank you NetGalley , Jen Williams and Cooked lame books for allowing me this opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of “Games for Dead Girls” due to be published April 18th 2023.

Charlie and her niece Katie are on a holiday in Hithechurch England. The village is full of folklore and urban legends where women keep going missing in the area.

This was my first book I’ve read from this author and I requested to read it because of the title and cover of the book. I’m one to base my reading selections on what I can see from the front cover. I’m not one to read the synopsis before I dive in.

This was a definite 4 star read for me and I really enjoyed the 3 times lines and the multiple POVs.