Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

It's an old story, told many times and many ways, but the ending is usually not the same, and this one certainly isn't. Five college girlfriends go for Spring Break to a remote winery on the Oregon coast which is owned by the family of two of them. But, at the end of the week, only four return.

So, what happened to Vanessa? Is she dead, lost to the wild waters off the coast, as is generally believed? Three of the girls believe she is dead, and each of them thinks she had something to do with her death. But they never talk about it together, so no one knows.

Fifteen years later, one of the girls thinks she sees Vanessa in a coffee shop in LA. This makes her believe it is time to finally figure out what happened all that time ago, so she contacts the other three and they meet up at the same winery for a long weekend. During that time of drinking, squabbling like schoolgirls, and general weirdness, a lot of truths come out. Someone knows what happened and is leaving clues for each girl, letting them know that someone KNOWS.

This was a fast read - I finished it in two days - but I really wanted a little more meat. The girls, now women, were superficial and never really fleshed out. I had trouble feeling much of anything for any of them, and the alternating between the story and the movie script was confusing. I wasn't sure what was happening and what was being written for effect in a script.

This was a book about toxic people / friendships that was just ... Alot !

Tbh this book just didn't do it for me . The chapters were like 40 pages each & also I just really didn't care about anyone that much.
I'd say it was a 2.5 ⭐ but I'm gonna bump it up to a 3 ⭐ .

I'm a California girl , born in Burbank so I loved the setting . LOVED the mention of Porto's towards the end. That place ❤️
If u know , u know.

This was unique and interesting book. I liked the parts that were written like a movie script. The mystery was good. The twists and turns were unexpected. This was a fun mystery that is written uniquely. Special Thank You to Jilly Gagnon, Random House Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy prior to publication in exchange for an honest review

SCENES OF THE CRIME by Jilly Gagnon is a twisty mystery of a girl’s weekend gone awry and the underlying relationships that led up to the event. Fifteen years prior, five college girlfriends get together for a girl’s weekend away at a remote winery on the Oregon coast. On that trip, Vanessa, the hub of the group, goes missing without a trace. Years later, Vanessa’s close friend Emily is still haunted by her disappearance. Stuck in her dead-end gig as a screenwriter, Emily thinks that if she could just tell the true story of what happened to Vanessa it would kick-start a new era of her career. If only she could remember the details of that fateful night. Emily orchestrates a reunion of the remaining four at the same winery, now owned by own of them, to try to uncover the truth. Everyone there hides secrets and none of them are reliable narrators now. Alternately between past and present, and interspersing scenes from Emily’s in-progress screenplay, secrets are revealed and long-buried grudges are unburied. Filled with friendship drama and a few interesting twists, the story kept my attention, but still had a few flaws that tripped me up. It was definitely an interesting premise. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read and review an early copy.

Screenplay or story?
A mystery/whodunnit involving a group of "toxic" friendships. The book within a screenplay sometimes gets confusing and rattles on with an excess common to a soap opera. This cautionary tale of supposed family/friends that manipulate every situation is frightening - every character has an agenda
If modern-day friendships are like these -you'd be safer alone

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. I was super excited for this thriller based on the premise but wound up being just medium on it. It has a lot of classic thriller tropes - toxic female friendships, fuzzy memory due to substance abuse, and a remote "locked room" style location. The description had me anticipating a more original thriller. I thought the interspersed screenplay sections were an interesting touch. Definitely a fast read.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bantam of Random House and the author Jilly Gagnon for advance copy for honest review.

Happy Pub Day!

This is a fun, twisty kind of book! Five girlfriends set out to a winery on the beautiful Oregon Coast. Everything is going great until one just up and disappears without a trace. Many years later, Emily thinks she sees her missing friend. This sparks interest in trying to figure out what really happened that night.. She builds a ruse, reuniting the girls to reconnect and to see who is holding onto secrets and try to get answers at - The Scene of the Crime.
4 stars recommend

do you have bad friends? well so does emily. holy moly so does emily. but it always that way. or was it? in this mystery by jilly gagnon, you'll be questioning if your memory is as good as you remember. if you'e the good friend. it's a testament to gagnon's writing that you want to know more about these women, even when they're being awful to each other. then it hits you with a twist. with eloquent writing, it's a must read for mystery fans. thanks to bantam for the arc!

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon

This story within a story from #PenguinRandomHouse and #NetGalley tells of a college friends’ reunion which goes wrong. Twice. It is pieced together intermittently with scenes created by attendee Emily who is a screenwriter. The story meshes with reality and her soon-to-be screenplay, which makes the title even more clever.

The ladies reunite after fifteen years to sort out the truth of what happened at their last gathering. It is a bit of a Housewives of … with three days of bickering, a lot of wine, questions and few answers.

I liked the author’s writing very much, but was disappointed with how long it took to get to the conclusion. The reader pretty much knows what happened, but so much additional information is added after the climax that it takes away the momentum.

I recommend this four star book for all mystery lovers.

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon is the kind of book I really don’t like: people sitting around, rehashing, judging. In this case the people are a group of friends, fifteen years out of college, mostly successful in their own ways. Emily thinks she sees the dead girl/woman in a coffee shop and that prompts her to contact the other women who had been present that weekend, when she had disappeared. They agree to meet at the “scene of the crime,” the winery owned by one of them. There is animosity almost immediately but Emily hangs in, desperate to learn if she was somehow responsible for her friend’s death.

These were mostly not nice people, at least when they were together. The atmosphere was toxic from the beginning. Emily didn’t remember it being this bad when they were younger. The characters were interesting, pretty well-written, and like many women approaching middle age. One was married with children, one was gay and married, the others determinedly single. They appeared to be doing well in their respective professions. It was grueling, listening to them whine and accuse. For many this was an excellent read. For me, it was not.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Scenes of the Crime by Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #RandomHousePublishingGroupBallantine #JillyGagnon #ScenesOfTheCrime

Emily is the producer of a TV show. When she was in college, she had a group of friends and one of them, Vanessa, disappeared fifteen years ago.

Brittany and Vanessa were cousins but their grandmother favored Brittany and was very hard on Vanessa. The grandparents have now passed on and the will states that the grandmother left the Cliff’s Edge Winery to their granddaughters. With Vanessa gone, Brittany has become the owner and has been running the place. It is located at a remote place by the cliffs in Oregon.

As the group has not seen one another in many years, Brittany invites Emily, Lydia, and Paige for a long weekend to catch up with one another. It looks like they might have a good time until some sinister things start to happen. Could Vanessa actually be alive? If so, where has she been and why has she not come forward?

This book is written as if it’s a TV show which made it rather confusing and somewhat hard to keep up with. I think if it had been written differently, I would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately, this scenario made the book drag for me.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Synopsis: Fifteen years ago, Vanessa Morales vanished from a girls weekend at a remote Oregon winery. Today, Emily is a sitcom screenwriter with ambitions to tell the story of her friend’s disappearance. But first she must find out what really happened that night. Emily organizes a trip with her friends back to the winery to discover which of them is hiding the secret that could be the key to what happened to Vanessa.

Thoughts: I thought this book was really clever! The concept is original, and the format is different than anything I’ve read before - the story is told in a mix of present day and past, which excerpts of the main character’s in-process screenplay throughout. The format makes it intentionally hard to tell what is real and who to trust. The twists were unexpected, and I definitely didn’t see the big one coming. My favorite part was the atmospheric setting of an old winery on the Oregon coast. I did enjoy this book, but the resolution didn’t quite come together, and I felt like there were a few plot holes. I also would have enjoyed it a bit more if the characters had more depth or at least one of them was more likable. Overall a solid thriller with an interesting concept.

Read this if you like:
🎬 movie/tv scripts
🎬 girls trips
🎬 wineries
🎬 dual timelines
🎬 unreliable narrator

Big Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for this ARC to read and review!

The premise of this was intriguing to me - but ultimately it fell flat and tried to do too much. The combination of the flashbacks and the screenwriting was hard to follow and thus lessened the tension.

The plot also felt a bit convoluted. In an attempt to shock readers, it felt like big reveals would be dropped that ultimately went nowhere.

Unfortunately, this one wasn't for me

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Jilly Gagnon wrote a page turner with SCENES OF THE CRIME, keeping me up way past my bedtime with a screenwriter attempting to pull together the four remaining friends for a reenactment of the girls getaway weekend when their erstwhile leader disappeared. I worked to connect with the characters, but other than feeling sorry for the screenwriter Emily, the overriding nasty individuals and their relationships made it tough. The overall mystery and the twists and turns were interesting. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

A reunion of the mean girls. I really had a hard time connecting with these women because they were all pretty mean to each other and to other people. After 15 years of thinking that she killed a friend, Emily sees a woman who looks just like the dead woman. She gets the idea to have the other girls gather at the place where their friend died and maybe they could get some kind of closure and just maybe Emily could get a screenplay out of it. They had not been together for years, but it seems as if none of them have changed since college. Each one thinks they killed their friend. What really happened? Will they ever know for sure?

A twisty thriller!

Emily is a screenwriter who is looking for her next big thing. What she keeps gravitating towards is the disappearance of college friend, Vanessa. After a weekend together with her old college friends, at the scene of the disappearance, a winery, long held secrets are finally coming out.

This was a wild ride!

The story of the women comes together nicely and there are definitely some twists and turns that keep the reader's interest. This is one of those books that you have to really not believe anyone. Each woman is obviously hiding something and it comes.

The thing that was so cool about this book was the screenplay aspect. At the end of each chapter, Emily writes (including notes which was fun) different scenes from the past and present. This gives it a unique aspect to those scenes as there isn't an actual narrator. I did wish that there were less characters. It was hard to have them all introduced at the same time.

All in all, this was an interesting thriller!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC. All of my reviews are always honest.

I picked this up several different times but just couldn't get into it. It's all over the place. There are just to many story telling devices used. The characters are unlikable which usually doesn't bother me but with everything else going on it resulted in me just not caring about the story.

This book was an interesting read! Some parts written like a transcript for a show, it went from future to present unraveling what happened to a group of friends years ago when one disappeared. The relationships were extremely toxic and the story unraveled nicely with some great twists!!

An interesting read but I never fully engaged with the characters. The plot was good.
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.