Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon
Release Date: 9/5/23
Format: audio/ebook hybrid
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

There are few thriller tropes I enjoy more than the unsolved mystery resulting in a sloppy reunion between college friends! That is exactly what Scenes of the Crime is…four college friends getting back together at a beautiful winery on the Oregon coast where their friend went missing years ago!

Y’all…these friends are SLOPPY. It was fun to watch everything (and everyone) unravel but I did have a hard time connecting with these unlikable characters! The pacing is quick, but I found the plot a little confusing at places.

Our main character is a screenwriter and Gagnon does some creative writing by throwing in actual screenwriting scenes throughout the book. I thought this was a really neat way to get our flashbacks! I also felt like the narrator was picked very well for the audiobook.

All in all, a solid thriller! I’d check it out if you enjoyed The Hunting Wives by May Cobb!

Five friends have a girls’ weekend at a remote vineyard, which results in a missing woman. Did she have an accident or were more sinister forces at work? One of the women decides to have a reunion at the Scenes of the Crime while working on a script about what happened all those years ago. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?

The book starts well but then quickly gets both confusing and repetitive. There are too many versions of the same events. The script formatted scenes show a modified version of the original girls’ trip. The flashbacks show another version. The present-day scenes vary depending on whose point of view is shown. By the reveal during the book’s conclusion, I really didn’t care which version was correct. Overall, Scenes of the Crime is a confusing mess that I don’t recommend at all. I’m not even sure how it got published. 2 stars.

Thanks to Bantam Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

Gagnon’s All Dressed Up was a fun read but this one fell flat. I absolutely adored the winery setting but I had a hard time really rooting for any of the character, each with their own motives for attending the trip. I rotated between reading and listening this one and it was much easier to read with the breaks where you had a screenplay going.

Scenes of the Crime is a unique take on the typical locked room mystery. Five college friends, one of whom died during a group getaway weekend at a vineyard, reunite 15 years later with the intent of resolving the mystery of what happened to Vanessa. One of the friends, Emily, is writing a screenplay based on the incident, and scenes from this writing are interspersed within the novel.

Contrary to many of the reviews I have seen, I thought that the scenes from Emily's writing brought clarity to some of the events referred to by the other characters. I did have some difficulty keeping fictional and real events separate, but it added some suspense to what was really a pretty basic plot and filled in some of the gaps in the story. Overall, I found the characters to be a bit cliche, not very nice people, and even in college they had not been what I would consider loyal or trustworthy as friends. Therein lies my struggle with the book: not much really happened, and I did not much care what happened to Vanessa, anyway. The actual conclusion of the mystery was, for me, a bit ho-hum and somewhat cliche.

Overall, Scenes of the Crime would be a good choice for a vacation read, where you don't want to think very hard about the story or get too emotionally involved.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House-Ballantine for the digital ARC of Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon. The opinions in this review are my own.

Vanessa disappeared on a girls’ trip years ago. Emily has wanted to write that story for the big screen for years. Finally seizing on her chance, Emily gets the remaining women together back at the original location to finally figure out the truth about that long ago night-or at least she hopes so.

This is a meditation on female friendship wrapped up in a suspenseful psychological thriller. Gagnon expertly explores what it truly means to be both a woman and a friend, and what happens if delusions around a supposed friendship do not hold true. The effects of a false friendship can cause harm long after the person is gone.

By including scenes from Emily’s script, Gagnon also plays with the idea of the unreliable female narrator, and what “based on a true story” really means. Readers get fictionalized versions of moments of the story, including things Emily wasn’t present for.

This is a clever book that I would recommend.

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon is my first book by this author and definitely not the last. This is a suspenseful story with many twist and turns. It is told in dual timelines with a twist, it has screenplay written into it. I really enjoyed this writing style. It is filled with friendships, secrets, lies, jealousy, mystery and murder. The characters are well developed, some likable and some not, with toxic tendencies. The story is fast paced and totally enthralling. It is unpredictable with a jaw dropping ending that will leave you speechless!! I highly recommend this one and look forward to reading more from Ms. Gagnon.

Thank you NetGalley, Random House, Bantam and Jilly Gagnon for this compelling story to read and review. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
#netgalley. #randomhouse. #bantam. #jillygagnon. #scenesofthecrime. #arc

It was suppose to be the perfect spring break. A remote Oregon Coast winery, an endless supply of wine and 5 college friends. During the trip something horrible happens and one of the five, Vanessa, vanishes without a trace and is presumed dead. Years later, the four left return to the winery to find out what really happened during that trip. Emily, now a writer for a television show just knows she can get the truth out of them and write the ultimate script for a new show.

This is the second book I have read by Jilly Gagnon and I just love her locked room mysteries. She uses a lot of descriptive words and phrases to describe the beauty of this remote Oregon Winery. The way the book bounces from the past and present with script writing was really interesting. The ending was not what I thought which I really appreciated.

Scenes of a Crime followed a script of basic book writing and it fell a little flat for me. Five 20 somethings, on a remote winery that is owned by one of the ladies' families. This has been overplayed at old hotels, ski lodges, hospitals, islands, etc. Then the book threw in a character that is actually trying to write a screen play 15 years after the initial trip and excerpts are stuck into the book. I did not feel the screen play aspects added to the overall story and hurt the flow.

This book is fine if you are looking for a beach read that is predictable and takes little concentration to figure out what is coming next. For some reason this book was memorable, so I believe there is a pretty good bones that make up this story.

I would like to thank NetGalley for an advanced copy of Scenes of a Crime in exchange for an honest review. #NetGalley #ScenesoftheCrime #Jilly Gagnon

I didn't know what to expect with this one. To be honest, I'm a little burnt out on thrillers at the moment but the premise of this one really interested me. I'm so glad I picked it up. There was no guessing game on who did what and where and when. The author throws curve balls left and right, which made for a very entertaining read. Right off the bat, we learn through scripts in between chapters, the narrator is unreliable. And that premise is true until the final page of the book. I am here for it. Emily was such an interesting character, and I wasn't sure if she was the good guy or the bad guy (I'm still not). The story keeps you hooked, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to read it.

Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed by this story and had such a hard time getting through it. 

I truly feel that what the author was trying to do was unique, which I appreciate. The mystery and thriller genre can be formulaic in nature, so mixing it up and attempting something new is admirable. It was great in theory to try it out. Mixing in the flashbacks through screenwriting was kinda cool and I loved that the author tried to be different. 

But in practice, I think it hurt the pacing. I know what the author was trying to do. She was trying to blend fact and fiction so that we, as an audience, were not only more invested, but less likely to pick out the twists and turns because we ourselves were twisted and turned. But to me, it was too slow for a build up that had very little pay off. For 50% of the book, it felt like nothing happened. And even when it did, I found that being so confused about what was fact and what was fiction actually hurt my understanding of the plot.

I also had large problems with the characters. The author tried to create toxic female friendships in their various forms. Many of the other reviewers stated that the women were unlikable. To me, an unlikable female character, when done well, really propels a novel forward. A woman doesn't HAVE to be likeable to be worthy. But, in this case, the characters were not done well. They were caricatures of what toxic female relationships looked like. Their motivations were confusing and very one dimensional. And because their motivations were the foundation of the novel, it created a novel that was limited and perplexing.

Overall, this was not the book for me. While I appreciate the author's attempts to try something new for the genre, I feel as if nothing happened for a majority of the book, the characters were too simplistic and reductive, and the plot just didn't add up.

Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a bit of a predictable story. It does have a Ya feel to it and may be more suitable for that audience.
I struggled to get through it. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

I struggled a little bit with the formatting of this, but that is on me. I thought it was a unique writing style.

When Emily sees a woman who looks exactly like her old friend Vanessa, who went missing years ago, she must go back to where it all happened to put the pieces together. With her screenwriter background, she has a unique way of fitting the puzzle pieces together.

She invites three girls to the place it all went down to uncover the truth. And of course, we learn they all had motive for wanting Vanessa gone.

This just wasn’t riveting enough to keep me fully invested. I found the characters a little dull, though ultimately, this was an enjoyable mystery.

4.25 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.


Emily is a screenwriter. She’s had a story in her head for years, but hasn’t been able to get it on paper. So when she thinks she sees her long dead friend in a coffee shop, Emily decides it’s time to solve the mystery of her friend’s disappearance years ago and get that story finished.

The four remaining women involved in the original mystery meet back up at the house where Vanessa went missing, but supposedly died, on the Oregon coastline. Emily knows that one of them has the true story locked deep away, but which one. After all these years can Emily’s sleuthing reveal the truth and help her complete the story that has no ending?

Great novel. I read Jilly Gagnon’s previous mystery - All Dressed Up - but this one was ten times better. I loved how the actual story was interspersed with flashbacks and pieces of the screenplay that Emily is working on. While I had my suspicions of how it would end, I truly never expected the ending that happened.

Really fun read, especially for a cold, foggy night along the coast with a glass of good Oregonian wine.

What happened that weekend at the winery 15 years ago? Emily has always wondered where Vanessa went- is she alive or is she dead?- and now she's really curious because she thinks she just spotted her alive. Now a screenwriter, Emily decides to reconvene with the other three women there that weekend to try to find the truth and make a script out of it. Brittany, Paige, and Lydia all have secrets (none that dramatic) which slowly come out. Gagnon mixes the "real" action with the screenplay in a device that doesn't always work. It is, however, what distinguishes this from the rather trope-y plot and characters. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A fast read.

TV sitcom writer Emily Fischer is desperately looking for a way to get out of her lucrative but mind-numbing job. She’s tried for years to finish a screenplay about a friend’s disappearance many years before. In order to finally finish, and hopefully get answers about what really happened, she calls the three other people who were present when their friend Vanessa went missing. Brittany has inherited the sprawling winery property after the recent death of her grandmother. Fifteen years ago, when the girls were in college, they had a wild weekend at the winery. Brittany’s cousin, Vanessa, who was the outcast in her family, attended along with Emily and two other girls, Paige and Lydia. Paige, an athlete, was always trying to gain Brittany’s favor and attention. Lydia was frequently at odds with Brittany and Emily was the peacemaker. One night, after a great deal of drinking, Vanessa texted Emily to meet her down at the beach. After that, Emily has no memory about what happened, but Vanessa was never seen again. Did she meet with a terrible accident? Did she go missing voluntarily? Or was someone responsible for her disappearance – possibly Emily herself, since she can’t remember anything that happened after receiving Vanessa’s text? Emily hopes that by drawing everyone together again, she can finally work out what happened to Vanessa, while at the same time crafting the story into a potential blockbuster of a screenplay.

The story alternates between the events happening in the present with the four women gathered at the winery, and the screenplay that Emily is writing. The screenplay's version of events doesn't always match up to what is actually happening in the story, so there were a few times I had to go back and make sure I knew which was which! There were plenty of twists and turns that made this a real page-turner!

Wow, I was not expecting any of this to even happen in this book, lol. It went by really fast and before u know it over and done and I am still left with the “WHAT?????” Emily is a screenwriter and using the story leading up to her best friend’s disappearance as inspiration. It’s been 15 years and she’s still left wondering on what really happened to Vanessa. She reaches out to the other girls and decided to make it into a girl’s weekend. They will stay at the family vineyard where Vanessa was last seen, now that’s creepy AF.

I loved how parts of the book reads like a script, I felt like I was auditioning. Anyway, there are some twists and every one of these women have secrets about what happened that night and I was loving all of that, until everything came crashing down. The story didn’t end the way I thought it will, these are the biggest group of toxic women I have ever met. I felt like there was more missing in this book, especially towards the end.

I want to thank Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

I was given access to this early via Netgalley & the publisher.

This was my first book from the author. The premise sounds really great. We are following 15 years after a tragic event happened in Emily’s life. Her friend Vanessa disappeared while they were on a weekend away, present day the rest of the group is getting back together at the same location.

This is a story of twisted friendship, romance, and mystery-ish. I was disappointed because the premise was promising and it just ended up being slow and pointless. I wasn’t interested or invested in the story. I am sad to say that I probably won’t be picking up another book from this author.

I liked the plot to this one but I did feel like it dragged on more than it needed to and some parts became redundant. There were a lot of times I thought things were happening that just didn't add to the plot and caused me to fight the urge to skim.

I loved how this was written. It alternated between normal book writing and screen play writing. Great use of tools. Good mystery.

I was super into the Oregon setting but sadly this one just didn't work for me. This format is problematic and I honestly just hate toxic female friendships with secrets and backstabbing. I think other people will dig this one, but it was just not for me.