The place is a beautiful winery built with stone and timber on the Oregon coast unlike no other. There are three caves on the property that are stunning but dangerous when the tide is in. Inside, one can see a view of huge cliffs and the ocean. And then the bonus: there is a cellar with a variety of rich wines to taste and enjoy. What’s there not to like?

How about four college friends – Emily, Brittany, Paige and Lydia – who have decided to regroup at the Cliff Edge Winery. Besides sipping really good wines, they have agreed to rehash what happened to their good friend Vanessa when she vanished 15 years ago. Emily figured that Vanessa had slipped over a dangerous cliff. An exhaustive search took place with no results. Then, Emily thought she saw Vanessa recently.

It had been some time since she chatted with the others in the group. She was hoping someone would remember something critical at the winery. After a few calls, they agreed to go there which I found to be amazing since they were no longer close.

Emily also had another agenda. She was a screenwriter and figured an interesting true story like this could boost her career. Every step of the way, she kept a secret sequence of events on her laptop which were recorded in the story. She needed some type of resolve.

The four women had their own agendas with lots of jealousy and drama. At least someone from the group should have been likeable. Even though I found it to be predictable, it kept my attention.

My thanks to Bantam Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of September 5, 2023.

Four women reunite fifteen years after their glamorous friend Vanessa disappeared and was declared dead. Emily, a TV sitcom writer, hopes a script based on the events, past and present, will catapult her career. Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin, acts as host at the secluded family winery she inherited. Lydia and Paige agree to come but are reluctant to fully engage with the group. Secrets, lies, and their dysfunctional friendship dynamics surface as what happened all those years ago is revealed.

Traditional prose is interspersed with sections of the script Emily is writing based on the mystery surrounding Vanessa’s disappearance. Both versions are heavily filtered through Emily’s perspective and reimagined in the case of the script. While the approach is innovative and fits perfectly with Emily’s goals and personality, the scripted sections adversely affect the novel’s pacing and kept me from bring fully invested in the storyline. While I appreciated the innovative storytelling, I feel the scripted sections would have worked better if they occurred less frequently.

I would have liked to have seen Lydia and Paige developed more and more scenes that included all four women. Some of the happenings felt a bit unrealistic, but the way the story is positioned through Emily’s fictionalized script helped make the events more palatable.

I enjoyed Emily’s goal driven character, her career woes, and her insight into the friendship dynamics. The conflict between the women was nicely shown and the setting exuded a cool modern gothic feel.

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

Thanks to Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, for providing an Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley.

Five college friends have a spring break at a winery on the coast owned by Brit & Vanessa's grandparetns. One of them goes missing...each of the other three think they may have killed her. Fifteen years later Emily gathers the other three at the same winery to learn who killed Vanessa Emily is a screen writer and she is writing scenes of what she imagines occurred. As Emily learns about each of her 'friends', she writes the scene including stage directions.
Read to discover the true story of the events that happend fifteen years ago. Plan on being surprised.

The atmosphere and the premise are great, you really feel as if you're in at the vineyard. The cave scenes were chilling. The unconventional structure of the story then a movie script was a tad confusing at time. I did like the ending but how you get to the twist was a bumpy ride. I did read it in one sitting so it did keep me entertained.

I'd give this a 3.5 out of 5.


Thank you NetGalley, Jilly Gagnon, and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

The setting of this novel is lovely. It's definitely got a creepy vibe but I also (strangely) wanted to visit. The chapters set up like a script were fun. However, the writing style was a little too wordy and long-winded for my liking, and there were definitely some parts that felt a bit dull. Additionally, some of the characters just didn't make sense to me. All in all, I wouldn't say that I loved this book, but I certainly didn't hate it either.

On paper, this book has everything I love (hence why I requested the #arc), but it just goes to show you - you can’t judge a book by its premise.

The premise: a stagnant screenwriter pulls together an impromptu recreation of an ill-fated spring break trip where one of their college friends went missing in an attempt to work out the script she’s been trying to write about the event. Oh, and to figure out what actually happened to her friend. Mostly the script thought.

The reality: an overly complicated framing device that includes scenes of “real events” and portions of the script in progress, which deviates from the real events just enough to cause some major confusion.

I still mostly enjoyed the book and it was a quick read, it just didn’t live up to its potential.

Though the premise of this held much promise, I feel as though it was a bit of a letdown. While the structure for this was unique, I found the chapters written like a script frustrating. I also struggled to get behind our main character and just couldn't vibe with the constant pitting of friends against friends. I feel like is an easy trope to fall into and I'm not a fan.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really thought this was going to be a real fun read but I was thoroughly disappointed in this book. It did not hold my interest and it was too much of a YA read. I made it through just past the 50% mark and then I decided it was a DNF for me. Life is too short to spend reading something that you do not enjoy and cannot connect with.

While I appreciate that the author was trying an unconventional structure for this novel, it did not work for me.

I found the interspersed scenes from the script Emily was writing to be both confusing and frustrating. It was clear that these scenes were a dramatized version of the events of the story. Many of the scenes in the first half also had editing notes from both Emily and another character (who we never meet in the story), though those notes were not present in the last half of the novel. Some of the scenes are repeats of events we saw in the "real" story, but many contradicted what we had witnessed. Other scenes included large plot reveals that we did not witness in the "real" story. the problem was that I couldn't trust any of these scenes, as they were dramatizations, so I was never sure what was really happening in the story. I think the author was deliberately trying to introduce some uncertainty, but it didn't work for me.

I also found the overall plot to be thin. The suspense element was taken away with a reveal at the midpoint of the book, so everything after that was just a group of poorly developed characters being nasty to each other for no real purpose.

I really enjoyed this novel. Beautiful prose, locked room setting, and fascinating (though mostly unlikeable characters, but I still loved reading about their juicy secrets!) I would definitely read more from the author!

Years ago, five girlfriends went on a trip to an Oregon winery. One of them didn’t come back. Now in present day, Emily wants to reunite the friends at the winery as a fifteen year commemoration. However, Emily really wants them to reunite to find out what happened fifteen years before.

I wanted to like this one so much, especially since some blurbs described it as Knives Out and Agatha Christie, two things I love. But I found the writing hard to get through. I didn’t even mind the chapters that were like scenes from a script. It just felt tedious a lot and I think it could’ve been ramped up to keep readers engaged.

I really desperately wanted the to be my 3rd book for the month of August, alas that was not the case. This is written like a dual book, one chapter of normal text then a chapter that is a screen play. For me trying to read a screen play is painful, I wish I couldn’t made myself finish this due to the story being interesting but it made my brain hurt

A locked-room mystery that reads too YA than it should. Nothing new or original here.

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

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon fell a little short of expectations for me. Emily, our protagonist, writes for a major sitcom but feels like she is destined for more. Emily feels like she has a story worth telling, a story that can get her out of her lackluster job and get her the recognition she feels she deserves. As a teen, Emily’s friend disappeared while they celebrated spring break at a winery owned by the family of two teens. Emily feels like if she can get her group of friends back together at the winery she can gather clues to solve the mystery of Vanessa and help her career at the same time.What secrets have her friends been hiding and will digging them up solve the mystery? Does Emily herself have secrets that will surface during this reunion?
This was a 2 star book for me. Plotwise, the story itself is very well told but predictable. The scenery is beautiful and vivid. I see a lot of potential for the author. There wasn’t one single character that is redeemable or likable. Maybe that was the author’s point but for me personally it’s hard for me to like a book with unlikeable characters.

DNFd at 30%

The premise is intriguing: a group of ex-college friends return to an isolated Oregon winery in an attempt to find closure for their friend's disappearance 15 years ago. Present-day narrative is broken up with pages of a screenplay.

This has formulaic thriller traits: friends who aren't really friends, a years-old story about a missing person, an isolated location where they're the only ones around... other than the screenplay parts, none of it felt unique or engaging.

I got a third of the way through and decided I didn't like any of the characters, wasn't invested in the mystery, and didn't find it fast-paced enough to keep my interest.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bantam/Random House for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Did AI write this?
No offense to the he author, but this book was all the tropes tossed together and stirred into a story. I felt like I was reading mad libs.

Friendship reunion in an isolated locale?Check.

Everyone kinda hates and suspects each other?
Yup.

Something mysterious happened years ago and they are down to figure out wtf happened now?
You know it!

Add in a bunch of wine and whining from one dimensional characters and you've got this book.

This was an interesting and unpredictable suspense novel told from the perspective of a writer trying to write a screenplay based on the disappearance of her friend in college by organizing a reunion with the other girls who there when she went missing to reenact what happened and try to gain some answers. What she discovers is not at all what she was expecting. I enjoyed this one. It was a twisty ride.

I absolutely loved All Dressed Up by Jilly Gagnon, so I was really looking forward to her next book. I'm sad to say that I was disappointed. The first 45% of this story was tedious and full of unnecessary descriptions of the winery and everything else. Nothing happens and I was extremely bored. The rest of the book was much better and moved at a quicker pace. I found the parts written as a screenplay confusing and pointless, since they just gave you an alternate version of what actually happened. It made it hard to tell what was real and what wasn't. I found it to be a strange addition that just didn't work for me. The characters were unlikable as well and it was hard to imagine how they were ever friends. I'm so sorry that I didn't love this one as much as I did her previous book. Hopefully other readers will enjoy this more than I did.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC.

Emily, a screenwriter for a lucrative but insipit sitcom, sees the exact look-a-like of her dead best friend, Vanessa, at a coffee shop which drives her forward in writing a script about what took place when Vanessa died on a girl's weekend at a remote winery in Oregon. Emily has no memories of the evening in question but convinces the other women to return to the winery for one last friendship gathering and to try to figure out what happened. Multiple formats here can be difficult to follow - Emily's screenplay that may or may not be accurate, the story from the trip where Vanessa died, and the story from the present day return to the winery. Lots of secrets and questions - did someone kill Vanessa? Is Vanessa really dead? What really happened? Could be a good discussion mystery.

I found this atmospheric story absorbing; from its setting, an isolated beach house and winery on a remote part of the Oregon coast; to the characters, a group of former college friends now in their forties; to the plot, with its gothic overtones of the supernatural. The action alternates timelines between 15 years in the past during a college spring break; the present, when the friends have reconvened at the beach house to honor their friend, missing since that fateful holiday; and the version of events as portrayed in one character's movie script from a time in the near future. Emily, the script writer; Vanessa, the charismatic missing woman; Brittany, the mean-girl frenemy who owns the beach house; Paige, Brittany's sycophantic sidekick since college days; and Lydia, the intellectual goth girl, are all great characters. The happenings in the story require a hefty suspension of disbelief at times, as is common with this sort of psychological thriller, but provided a reader can overlook some unlikely plot lines, the novel is very readable. The action moves swiftly, keeping the tension high, and switching between timelines also serves to prolong the suspense, with the truth gradually being revealed as the story progresses.