I swear the glittering electricity that pulsated my body when I was asked to read Scenes of the Crime, as an early reader was real...

Jilly Gagnon, has taken the internet by storm since her debut novel, #famous. Having read and loved #famous, I was eager to get my hands on All Dressed Up, that left me equally as impressed! All Dressed Up had captivated my soul and had been in the number one spot since 2022, That is, until Scenes of the Crime, fell into my lap.

Gagnon, is a natural born story teller. Her writing style will grab your attention early on and suck you in without release until the very last word in the book.

Every time a twist reveals itself you will feel as though you were gut punched! Catch your breath quickly, the next twist will be in your face within seconds.

As always, a Jilly Gagnon delivers. Scenes of the Crime, is sure to be a hit amongst readers.

Teaser :

It should have been the perfect spring break: Five girlfriends. A remote winery on the Oregon coast. An infinite supply of delicious wine at their manicured fingertips. But then their center—beautiful, magnetic Vanessa Morales—vanished without a trace.

Emily Fischer was perhaps the last person to see her alive. But now, years later, Emily spots Vanessa’s doppelganger at a local café. At the end of her rope working a lucrative yet mind-numbing gig on a network sitcom, Emily is inspired to finally tell the story that’s been percolating inside her for so long: Vanessa’s story. But first, she needs to know what really happened on that fateful night. So she puts a brilliant scheme into motion.

She gets the girls together for a reunion weekend at the scene of the crime under the guise of reconnecting. There’s Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin and the inheritor of the winery; Paige, a former athlete, bullish yet easily manipulated; and Lydia, the wallflower of the group.

One of them knows the truth. But what have they each been hiding? And how much can Emily trust anything she learns from them . . . or even her own memories of Vanessa’s last days?

Suspenseful, propulsive, and interspersed with scenes from Emily’s blockbuster screenplay, Scenes of the Crime is an unforgettable mystery that examines culpability, the shiny rearview mirror of Hollywood storytelling, and the pitfalls of female friendship.

I found this to be a not exactly interesting book. It toggles between times in the life of four friends (one is deceased or missing) and the screenplay about the disappearance by one of the friends.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story of toxic friendship and soapy drama. I loved how the author wove in the screenplay excerpts, bouncing between timelines. I couldn’t stop turning the pages to figure out what was going on. Gripping and twisty!

I read the author's previous novel All Dressed Up and fell flat for me. This novel was SO good and i'm so glad I gave this author another try. Thanks netgalley & the publisher for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

Jilly Gagnon is back with a locked room mystery about a group of friends who get together at the same winery 15 years after one of them went missing. I love stories that have this kind of premise. One of the friends, Emily is using this mystery with her friends to write a screenplay to boost her career but at the same time working to get answers to what really happened to Vanessa all those years ago. The story is told between two different time frames as well as some of the screenplay Emily is writing. As the secrets begin to be revealed it makes you wonder if these girls were ever really friends to begin with. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam for the ARC!!

Holy smokes. This story and these characters put the "ick" in toxic, narcissistic and psychotic!!! Not only are there twists and turns, but there are dips and pivots and landmines and sinkholes. Just when you are sure you know the whole story, something comes along and proves otherwise. Female relationships are so complex and can be so darn ugly!!!

This was reminding me of “the only survivors” - but more toxic?

The characters were terrible- but in a way a train wreck you wanted to keep watching.

I think this will be a top contender for thriller fans!

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to receive an arc in exchange for an honest review!

A handful of girlfriends who'd gone their separate ways meet up at a secluded winery to hash out what happened to their friend all those years ago. One of them killed her... right?

Flipping back and forth between present and fictionalized flashbacks in screenplay format was really really cool. It forces the reader to question, well, everything! Timelines, truth, the way things fit together -- you can't help but wonder how much is what really happened and how much is "just for show."

Awesome premise, awesome mixed media format. But for me, the story just dragged. It was high tension all the time, but no clear reason WHY I should be on the edge of my seat. After about 30% I started skimming, and I hate to do that. Maybe an audio format would've made it more digestible.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Vanessa disappeared 15 years ago and her friend Emily has been thinking about her ever since. She convinces three of her former friends/acquaintances to reunite for one weekend so they can figure out what happened the night Vanessa vanished…

This isn’t my usual genre - I appreciated the fast pace, the setup of the plot, and initially liked the screenplay interludes. After a while, I couldn’t keep track of the screenplay scenes and the sequencing of events - some of them seemed to precede what was going on in present day. I would have liked more development of each of the characters and clearer rationale of why they spent time together all those years ago - they didn’t seem to really care for one another. 2.5 stars.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

This is 1000% not my usual genre, yet I generally enjoyed the book.

I enjoyed the all-female dynamic, though I wish it had been paired with with a motive/complication other than abuse. But…that’s almost all thrillers. I would recommend the book to my book club, but only for the novelty and for the author being female.

The premise of this novel had me intrigued: a reunion of college friends that is overshadowed by the disappearance of one of them 15 years earlier. Yet, this book sort of fell flat for me. Although was well-plotted, the “script portions” definitely took away from the storyline. And, I found it difficult to really relate to any of the characters. All in all, this was a good read, but not a great one.

A new author for me. An ending I definitely hadn't figured out. The protagonist gathers friends to solve a 25 year old disappearance at the scene of the crime, She's a screen writer, and throughout the book drafts dialogue of potentially what happened (this was a little distracting but points for creativity!). This friend group is super dysfunctional!

Scenes of the Crime is a mystery centered around former college friends who get together as the anniversary approaches of the disappearance of one of the friends. The friend who was the glue for the group. 15 years prior, five friends visited a family winery on spring break. The friends all go to the same college and are roommates, it seems the one friend, Vanessa, who is the focus of the disappearance was the glue that connected them all together as their friendship was superficial at best. Vanessa disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and nobody is being clear with each other on what truly happened that night. Fast forward 15 years and the narrator, Emily is now a screenwriter. She is in a Los Angeles coffee shop, writing for a TV show that she hates and bored with her life, she sees a woman that reminds her of her lost friend and here she decides to revisit the winery with all of her former friends to finally unravel the mystery of what happened to Vanessa. It soon becomes clear however, that she not so much cares as to what really happened to Vanessa, but to be able to write the ultimate screenplay to market to Hollywood so she can get out of her hated job. As everyone agrees to get together, it is soon discovered they are all hiding secrets. I found that I did not like anyone in this story, the missing friend Vanessa, played up to the poor little rich girl scenario in college quite well, she was hated by her grandmother for being the product of an affair, and instead of making her own path, decided to live her life full of manipulation of others, including her own affair with a professor and manipulating her friends. She failed all of her classes and instead of ownership manipulated others into believing she was something special and deserved pity. The other friends were two girls who came from money, and one odd girl out who had to work to try and take care of her mother's medical bills as well as her school expenses. Emily was also the odd girl out, she seemed to be more middle class rather than upper class and she silently judged everyone in the group while lying to their faces in order to 'keep the peace'. The author, Jilly Gagnon, would go back and forth between chapters as present, past and screenplay that Emily was writing. I found this to be very distracting and the screenplay added nothing to endear me to the story. I often skipped over these parts as they ultimately did not provide any believable background to the story of Vanessa's disappearance. The story dragged on at points and by the conclusion the surprise ending fell flat for me. I was hoping that at least one of the characters would have endeared themselves to me, but I found them all to be narcissistic and flat characters. This book was not for me, but I do believe there is an audience for it. Thank you to NetGalley and Ballentine Books for the advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a great read! I really enjoyed the characters and the plot. It held my ATTENTION and kept me on my toes! A sold 4 star read!!

Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this one ahead of publication!

A twisty thriller involving close friends, a mysterious disappearance and multiple time lines are the core of this dark mystery.

From the publisher:
It should have been the perfect spring break: Five girlfriends. A remote winery on the Oregon coast. An infinite supply of delicious wine at their manicured fingertips. But then their center—beautiful, magnetic Vanessa Morales—vanished without a trace.

Emily Fischer was perhaps the last person to see her alive. But now, years later, Emily spots Vanessa’s doppelganger at a local café. At the end of her rope working a lucrative yet mind-numbing gig on a network sitcom, Emily is inspired to finally tell the story that’s been percolating inside her for so long: Vanessa’s story. But first, she needs to know what really happened on that fateful night. So she puts a brilliant scheme into motion.

This is a thriller that really takes you on a ride - from the lush scenery, to the frenemies that are talking their way out of any responsibility, to the cut scenes that Emily is writing - as she is using this experience to write a movie based on her true life story. It’s an interesting story for sure, although I did find myself getting a little confused to timelines and how things actually happened, since Emily’s scripts are in each chapter (a fun plot device!) I also found it a little tough to read such manipulative characters - it seems like many books I’ve read lately that involve female friendships ALWAYS have toxic traits to them, but if you are into mysteries that involve groups of female friends, this is definitely one you should pick up.

The premise of this book was interesting, done before , a missing friend, a leader a bright star, a group of toxic friends going back to honor her disappearance 15 years before. One of them is a screenwriter and wants to write a screen play to work out what happened to her. Unfortunately the scenes written that way, didn't work for the flow of the story. There was a lot of descriptions and a slower pace, all in all was hard to get invested in it. I had higher hopes for this but it didn't really work for me

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Random House Publishing Group Ballantine for an advance copy of this book of suspense, involving a a group of friends, with a secret and a screenplay is just dying to be written.

Writing can be a great way to try and create moments in a person's life that one has let slip away, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. Maybe a person might try journaling their thoughts, concentrate on moments that one would like to remember, a fun time, or the last time one saw a friend. Free associate where others where, what might have happened, and get it down on paper. Or one could do what the main character in the thriller Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon does a try to turn an event into a screenplay that might make a career, or get a a young writer killed.

Ten years ago five friends went on a spring break to a remote winery in Oregon, far from the maddening drunken crowds. Quiet, with a chance to relax, do some self-care, lots of wine a good time was being had by all until the unthinkable happened. Vanessa, the one the group was based around, disappeared completely. Emily a screenwriter on a popular show Emily can't stand might have been the last to see Vanessa, something that comes back to Emily when a woman who looks like Vanessa appears in a coffee shop. Emily knows she is missing something, and sees an opportunity. Find out what happened to Vanessa, and maybe make a screenplay out of it. Emily gets the gang together at the same place, and begins to notice problems, in the stories that the girls are telling. Emily slowly comes to the realization that someone knows the truth about Vanessa, and isn't looking to be a co-writer on Emily's script.

A thriller for the beach, with enough chills and thrills, and twists to make the sun have to work overtime. The story is good, the mystery works, and the plot moves well, though there is a few pacing issues in the middle, and a lot of exposition in the beginning, but that works itself out. Emily can be a little self-centered, but as a character Emily does get better, though sometimes you want to yell at Emily about missing the obvious. The idea about making a screenplay is different and I liked the idea of that quite a bit. Read this before it comes to Netflix. This would be a perfect one season miniseries.

Recommended for fans of Megan Abbot, Rachel Hawkins and Lucy Clarke. A clever story perfect for the beach.

Her best fiend disappears and her firmed tries to recreate the girls trip from which she disappeared. What could go wrong? Emily searches for the answer and sees her friends lookalike at a coffee shop. Emily searches and searches for answers. Will she find her friend Vanessa? This is pretty good but a bit slow and I found myself not really invested in the outcome.

Interesting premise and deliberate execution.

Four friends revisit the location of the death of their friends. Each, deeply mistrusting if the others. Each with her own secrets to conceal. Each with her own motivations for hiding pieces of her past and revisiting the “scene of the crime.”

The writing had glimpses of greatness but the pacing left this reader a bit underwhelmed.

t should have been the perfect spring break: Five girlfriends. A remote winery on the Oregon coast. An infinite supply of delicious wine at their manicured fingertips. But then their center—beautiful, magnetic Vanessa Morales—vanished without a trace. Emily Fischer was perhaps the last person to see her alive. But now, years later, Emily spots Vanessa’s doppelganger at a local café. At the end of her rope working a lucrative yet mind-numbing job on a network sitcom, Emily is inspired to finally tell the story that’s been percolating inside her for so long: Vanessa’s story. But first, she needs to know what really happened on that fateful night. So she puts a brilliant scheme into motion. She gets the girls together for a reunion weekend at the scene of the crime under the guise of reconnecting. There’s Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin and the inheritor of the winery; Paige, a former athlete, bullish yet easily manipulated; and Lydia, the wallflower of the group. One of them knows the truth. And how much can Emily trust anything she learns from them . . . or even her own memories of Vanessa’s last days?

I was introduced to Jilly Gagnon in All Dressed Up so when I saw she had a new book out, I requested it and thank NetGalley and the publisher for granting my request. As in the other book of hers I read, she writes and twisty, psychological novel with many surprises. Her characterizations are outstanding. I highly recommend it.