Gorgeous horror and a. Ice ARC, very supernatural and very much like a dark thriller. I loved the blending. Thanks for the arc

A massive thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!! I really enjoyed this book; definitely something I will tell my friends about!

This is an amazing YA thriller book. The story takes place 20 years after the double murder of two high school aged girls. Tru was born after the murders in the same town and her family lost her sister in a tragic hit and run. Tru meets Rio on one of her many outings to the local springs that she frequently free dives at. Rio also is interested in the murders and the more the two dig into the past the more dangerous it becomes when it becomes clear that someone is stalking the two girls. Both girls can remember various parts of the murders even though they weren't born yet it is as though they are the murder victims reincarnated. This book had me continuously turning the pages I couldn't put it down. It had my heart racing as I was scared and nervous for the girls and if they would make it out of this alive.

Celeste and Bailey were gruesomely murdered nearly 20 years ago in Mount Orange, Florida.
Present day, Tru and Rio join forces to try and solve the cold case of the teenagers. Someone starts stalking them and disturbing things come to light. Things heat up with Tru and Rio as the summer progresses even though Tru has a childhood sweetheart.
This was a creepy, intense read that I stayed up late into the night to finish.
Thanks NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group for this ARC that will be released March 5, 2024!

4.25 Stars
The story begins with the unveiling of yet another memorial for Bailey and Celeste, whose unsolved murders occurred almost twenty years ago. Tru has just graduated from high school and is spending as much time as she can free diving in the freshwater springs her small town is well known for. Diving and the unsolved murders are both top of mind for her this summer. It is at the springs that she meets Rio, who is new in town, and as focused on the murders as Tru. They become fast friends, and diving companions, while they search for answers about the murders and their own identities.

This story was very compelling, and I breezed right through it. The twists kept me guessing almost to the very end. The writing in this book was so crisp I felt like I could see this small town and the springs from the descriptions. This is a must read for anyone that likes small town mysteries.

Thank you to Net Galley, the author and publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Such a great thriller! I loved the current timeline meshing with a story of the past. I love how this book also managed to be a wonderful coming of as he story. We got not only this wonderful thriller but also Tru and Rio finding themselves in the process. The end had my jaw on the floor!

When I first started to read this story, I thought I knew where it was going to go and then things kept happening causing me to second guess everything. I had to keep reading it, just to see how it ended. The crazy amount of things that went on in this town, it is a wonder how anyone ever trusted someone. Then I learned about free diving from this book, never knew that was a thing and seeing it used as both an escape and it makes sense when one of the twists comes to light. This was a rather fun ride of a story and how it ended, I was pleasantly happy with it. Everything did come together perfectly and I am so happy to have gotten an arc of it. Thank you so much for allowing me to read it.

One Last Breath was captivating from the first page. Tru is a fascinating main character--true to herself, curious, and brave. This was a pretty fast-paced read, perfect for true crime fans, and one that keeps you guessing until the very end. There's an unsolved murder, a killer on the loose, and an investigation that was fun to piece together along with Tru and Rio. The side characters added so much to the tension and mystery, and the end wraps up nicely, although a bit abruptly. I didn't know what to expect picking up this book, but I was pleasantly surprised and read it quickly. Fans thrillers, supernatural mysteries, and true crime will love this!

Thank you to netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read this book. This book was overall decent. I enjoyed i wanted more but I did enjoy it

I DNF'd this book I tried so hard to get into this story but it was so blah and forgetable that I even forgot I was reading it and forgot to go back and pick the book back up to read.

This one wasn't for me. I felt that the story had a good premise for your standard YA thriller/mystery, but the fantasy/paranormal element threw me off as it was unexpected - especially with the ending! I liked the twists and I think YA readers who enjoy fantasy would get more out of it, but it just isn't my thing. That being said, I'd be interested in reading other works from this author - thank you for the ARC!

I think I'm settling on 4 stars. This is my first read from Ginny Myers Sain, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that it will not be my last. The quality of the writing was exceptional and the atmosphere and ambiance that Myers Sain crafted was masterful. The story itself felt like if a Stacy Willingham book and Simone St. James book had a baby, and that baby was YA. If you like haunting, creepy thrillers with fantasy/ paranormal elements, then you should absolutely check out One Last Breath. Truly, I couldn't put this down. It's not that it was fast paced, because it wasn't. But it was paced perfectly, and Myers Sain sprinkled crumbs and revelations at just the right moments to keep you hooked. Honestly, the build up was a master class in suspense.

Why 4 stars instead of 5? The ending was just a little too fantastical for my preference. And I'm not talking about the fantasy-esque components... I was fine with that. But with that aside, the ending felt a little too unrealistic, and at some points, maybe even silly? Like the author was just throwing everything against the wall to see what would stick/ be the most dramatic and surprising. But literally every thing else about the book was perfection, and I unequivocally recommend this. Thank you so much to Myers Sain, Penguin Teen, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this early in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dark and Shallow Lies was a 5 star book for when i had read it so i had high expectations for this book and even though it isn't a 5 star read i still very much enjoyed and will most likely buy a copy when its released.

My true crime loving heart ate this up i loved the loosely woven paranormal aspect of why Tru and Rio connected so fast and the whole reincarnation thing was pretty cool to read about as well.

If you liked Ginny Myers Sain Dark and Shallow Lies you will love this book as well, please RUN don't walk and grab you a copy when it comes out in March 2024.

Heart pounding thriller that left me on the edge of my seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Definitely one of the best books this year.

I absolutely loved this book!! This book starts out with a memorial service for 2 girls that were murdered at hidden glen 30 years prior. The girls names were Celeste and Bailey. They had gone camping and the next morning their bodies were found one by the tent and the other was lying in a crystal clear bottomless pool. It is where all the locals go to cool off during the hot summer days. However no one tries to swim in them at night because of the alligators like to swim in them at night.

All the local teens like to use the springs to go free diving. They swim as far down the spring as they can before coming back up again for air. Tru meets another girl named Rio and they become best friends, together they work to uncover what really happened to Celeste and Bailey several years ago and at the same time they find out who they truly are and what they are to each other.

The ending of this book was so good!! I won’t give it away but I will tell you that you absolutely need to read this book because it ended up being someone you wouldn’t have ever expected.

Trulee (yes, you read that right) has been obsessed with the Hidden Glen killings since she can remember. The small town where two girls were killed and the killer never caught is also Tru's hometown, and the town where her sister died to boot. Enter Rio. Not the river, the girl. Everything about Trulee's life gets turned upside down, including her feelings and her understanding of the world at large.

I have read everything Ginny Myers Sain has put out. This one would likely have been my favorite if not for a couple of glaring issues. But let's start positive.

The plot is a slow burn, both in the romance and actually action parts. I would argue that the ending is a little too fast and as a result, some details are fuzzy and confusing. The twists are GOOD though. I just wish they had maybe been spread a little bit more throughout the book.

The characters. They fell a bit flat. Derry was probably the best, and she doesn't make much of an appearance. East is great as well, I need justice for my boy. Rio and Tru are nearly codependent, and they just met. Tru doesn't seem to do a lot of thinking for herself, she believes whoever she's around at the time. I won't go into too much because of spoilers, but the paranormal twist is super obvious early on, and honestly too many people believed it right off the bat with no pushback whatsoever.

Now for my frustrations: there's emotional cheating in this book. I am staunchly anti-cheating in any form. I will say it does toe the line, but Tru pulls away from her longtime boyfriend and emotionally replaces him with another person before breaking up with him. Also, while the mysteries are "solved," it's unclear who killed Celeste and Bailey, because one second it's explicitly stated that person A did it, and the next, person A and person C are vouching for each other because they knew they would be suspects and that person B did it. The reveals at the end were great though!


Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review!:)

80/100 or 4.00 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was great. I think it is a solid psychological thriller that people will enjoy. I did figure out early on what was going on, but I can also acknowledge that even though I figured out who the killer was, I still had a good time. The last 15% brought it down to 4 stars for me, as it was a little much leading up to the climax/reveal. I would recommend it for those interested in this genre.

This is a hard one for me to rate because on one hand I didn't *hate* the reading experience, and I flew through it really quickly. But, on the other hand, I did have a handful of issues with this story. I'll start with what I liked, though. I liked the premise of this story a lot--a cold case, a serial killer, small town Florida, queer rep. I love things set in small towns, so I was really excited for this but I honestly didn't end up really getting a good sense of the town. We got a lot of "it's hot" "I'm sweating" or other descriptions of being moist from the heat, but the actual town wasn't really described/utilized much, which was a bummer.
The characters were also pretty one note. Trulee (MC) was sort of head-empty, too. I felt like she...wasn't doing much thinking or connecting the dots? I don't know how to explain it. Like, she would have a big clue moment and go home and eat food, or think about East, and then the next day she would debate sharing with Rio. That whole thing would happen every time she figured something out, and it just got repetitive and really slowed the pacing of the story down (which I would argue was already pretty slow until like the last 25% of the book). Rio also felt like she needed some fleshing out. We get a little information about her backstory, which was great, but then in all of Tru and Rio's interactions they both felt like the same surface level character. I have to say, I also wished the girls were being haunted by the dead duo, or something. Having them just "be" the dead girls was an interesting risk to take that ultimately felt a little bit silly to me.
East was also done weirdly. When Tru and East break up, he starts spouting off weird phrases and therapy speak that I would argue most adults wouldn't even know. He absolutely didn't react to that experience as a 17-year old boy. Even if he was a softer, sweeter boy, he absolutely was too young to *immediately* be like "I'll always love you but I'm working on forgiving you". It's just not believable to me that he was a teenage boy. Teenaged boys are absolutely allowed to be emotional beings, but that was definitely the author and not East reacting as a teen.
I also have to say, and it might be because I read so much YA for my job, but the reveal didn't get me like I thought it would. I think that's because the culprit was sort of Chekhov's Gun-ed into the story in a way where I was like "Well if they're not involved then none of this really means anything/makes any sense".
But yeah, overall not a horrible book by any means. I wish the whole story was a bit deeper, though. And I think the style of the prose may have honestly contributed to the story feeling so shallow, because we spent a *lot* of words describing being sweaty and hot, or diving, etc. that the actual world and characters didn't get the page-time they needed to really develop some depth.

Basically a sister tries to find her sisters cold case and then there’s paranormal I liked that we got to follow the MC on her journey to answers and there were sooo many red herrings throughout the story. I was surprised with the ending and really enjoyed this book.

Rounded up to 3.5 ⭐️

I found this to be a super easy read and got through it quickly. I did figure it out fairly early on, at one point thought I was wrong butttttt I wasn’t lol. The characters were likable and I enjoyed the story. This was the first book I’ve read in a long time that didn’t jump between past and present so if you’re into that, this is the book for you. Overall, good read!!!

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Penguin Group - Penguin Young Readers Group for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.