The narration of the book is fantastic. And Charlie’ voice was so easy to collapse into. Its an immersive and effortless to read. Soon the words disappeared and I saw the action playing out in front of me in rich detail.

A page turner. I read it in one sitting. Murder on campus, very suspenseful. I enjoyed the twists as well. I found Charlie’s character to be believable and her sister was adorable. Great read.

When Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Colbert was a young, impressionable twenty-three year old just starting her graduate degree in journalism, her world was rocked off of its foundation. Supposedly just a mere witness, the life-altering events that took place on Christmas Eve at her crème de la crème university, have left Charlie scarred by the past. It took everything she had to get through the aftermath of what the country coined ‘Scarlet Christmas.’ Especially given that she knows she was so much more than just a spectator, which is a fact she’s worked hard to keep hidden.

Now nine years after that fateful, blood-soaked night, Charlie has worked her way up to editor-in-chief of a glamorous magazine and is engaged to the heir of a major publishing house. With a thicker skin and quite the reputation to protect, Charlie is adamant that no one will ever be able to get through her defenses again. Especially once she learns of a new movie set to be filmed. Based on the events of the worst night of her life, Charlie knows she can’t let it go ahead. She simply has too much to lose. No matter the cost, she will stop the film in its tracks—even if it means more blood must be spilled.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead was quite the slow burn psychological suspense novel. Not exactly a thriller, in my humble opinion, it was nevertheless a startling exposé on grief and trauma. Complete with several shocking twists and a top-notch unreliable narrator, this compelling debut from Jenny Hollander was a solid read for this mystery lover.

The strongest piece to this puzzle of a plot were certainly the dynamic characters—especially Charlie herself. Taut and beautifully written, her fragile state was perfectly crafted. From debilitating anxiety to life-altering dissociation, Charlie’s mental health drove the storyline for much of the book. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of well guarded secrets and underhanded motivations, but the characters were easily the star, as the rest of the cast were also simply sublime.

As for that plot, around halfway through I was utterly floored by what I thought would be a game-changing twist. Sadly, however, it didn’t quite lead anywhere in the end. Even the perfectly set up climax was somewhat of a let down when it too was less than I expected. Just the same, Charlie’s unraveling and the much hinted at mysterious history kept me gladly turning the pages until the final conclusion, which had me smiling with glee.

My biggest issue with the story, however, was the very format itself. Told via dual timelines of then and now with the focus primarily on the latter, I personally thought it could’ve been a much stronger novel if the emphasis had been on the former. With constantly building foreboding and mania for days, I would have much preferred to see the events taking place live, so to speak, instead of them coming across as rather flat, all said and done.

Still, it was quite the gripping novel. Starting with a bang with an attention-grabbing prologue that promised one heck of a plot, the poignant exploration of trauma was a serious hole in one. On top of that, the tension I could feel seemed to raise the stakes as the plot continued to unfold, making me race through the pages to learn the truth of what happened that fateful night. In the end, while it wasn’t necessarily perfect, I enjoyed this book wholeheartedly and look forward to seeing what Hollander writes in the future. Rating of 3.5 stars.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead is Jenny Hollander's debut suspense novel, and I think she did a wonderful job. I will admit, the premise of the story itself - that being a violent event at a picturesque university where students die - did not intrigue me much, as I had read many suspense books like it before. However, the way in which Scarlet Christmas was portrayed to the reader was clever and unlike other books in this niche of the genre. Not only was I trying to guess who the culprit was, but for a while, I was also guessing who the three victims even were and how it all happened. Hollander gives bits and pieces of the story away as our protagonist uncovers her repressed memories of the event, bringing us on the wild ride with her. When the twist(s) were finally revealed, I was impressed because the thought did not even cross my mind. I was guessing until the reveal, which is a sign that the plot had me captivated.

I will say, I was not fond of the protagonist or the characters in general. I feel like they had little substance, and that for many, their only distinguishing characteristic was what kind of accent they had. I did love Charlie's sister, though, and the Down Syndrome representation in the novel. I also appreciated Charlie's humour and inner monologue. There were some tongue-in-cheek remarks and jokes that had me smirking while I read.

All in all, I think that this was a wonderful debut from Hollander and, despite some areas for improvement, she has the solid workings of a thriller writer and I cannot wait to see what she writes next!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an electronic advanced copy of Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander. All thoughts and opinions are my own and are not influenced by any third parties.

This book had its ups and downs. It's not truely original, since murders on campus books abound, but it had a bit of a twist. I didn't love all the endearment on every single page.. dude, darling. Babe..over that!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

After spending all this time reading it, the end was a let down. What I *thought* was going to happen (and what I thought was the big mystery) was so much less than it really was. Also, the twists took forever. When the big reveal happened, I felt like I'd misread the whole first half of the book. It wasn't a thriller at all. I wasn't even sure it was a murder mystery until the very end.

It wasn't all bad. I liked the main characters for the most part. The reminiscing of times with college buds was fun, and I loved that Olivia was such a good friend to Charlie over her whole life. Tripp seemed like a decent guy, even if his mom was a big bag of poo. I was invested in learning exactly what happened on Scarlet Christmas. Knowing this is a debut novel, I think I'd read the next book by the author. She had a solid story and it was interesting for the most part.

There was nothing new or profound about this. Someone dies on a college campus, secrets and what-not come out. This moved too slow for my liking.

I enjoyed this one but I will admit it took me a little while to figure out what was happening. A lot of names and relevant people to keep track of so it became confusing at times. It’s your usual “someone dies on a college campus”
Thank you #netgalley and #minotaur for the early copy.

I wanted to like this book more than I did! I had read a snippet from the book in a sampler and enjoyed it enough to want more. But, the unreliable main character was SO frustrating! She's strong and powerful but she also an absolute mess?! I didn't like it or identify with it. The entire story would have been so much better if the author found a way to tell it without making the main character a complete disaster.

This review was also posted on Goodreads.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

You know when you have all the ingredients you need to make a recipe. But you decide you need to jazz it up, and once everything has finished cooking you sit down to eat. And you find that the meal is just not as good as you wanted it to be after you added all the extras?
OK, what I'm trying to say is that this book was predictable and had all the ingredients to be a good dependable read. In a nutshell, it was just trying too hard and the simple could have made a good "comfort" read.
Not only were there too many ingredients, but it also moved at a snail's pace for me. The saving grace was the plot believability ran in a realm of, well.... believable in most aspects.

Is it a bad book? No! Not at all. I just wouldn't say this one was for me.

A survivor of a bloody crime in college, magazine editor Charlotte has moved on to a glamorous life and left the tragedy behind her. An anniversary of the event threatens to bring new evidence to light, and Charlotte struggles to remember the events of that night.

I found this book weird and a bit hard to get through. There are unreliable narrators, manipulative narrators. Charlotte was a confused narrator with intrusive thoughts. As a person with OCD I wanted to give her a hug and hand her some medication.

I rate this book 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it, for a while, and I did like that Charlotte finally got to the real truth by the end of the novel.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book to review.

I wasn’t a fan of this story. It wasn’t as thrilling as it was made to be and the multiple characters were hard to keep track of! The plot started off interested but lost me during the ending.

My thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books/St.Matrtins Publishing for the ARC of "Everyone Who Can Forgive Is Dead"....
When I first heard this terrific title I thought 'this sounds like either a psychological thriller or an Italian western that Clint Eastwood passed on.
It's the first of those two choices and belongs in an ever growing sub-genre of thrillers........in which the survivors of bloody mass murders deal with the repercussions of the crime.....with the deaths usually happening a decade or so earlier during their college days.
I've already read any number of such novels and it seems like they're piling up enough for librarians and booksellers to group them in special displays.....(possibly under the heading, "You thought YOU had it tough in college"
The alumni of a prestigious journalism graduate school have done pretty well for themselves, especially 'Charlie' Colbert, a transplanted Brit who's become the editor of a celebrated supplement to a major newspaper. And not only that, she's engaged to the heir of powerful publishing empire.
But Charlie's haunted with agonized guilt over the notoriously named "Scarlet Christmas", when those among her circle of collegiate friends were brutally murdered on Christmas Eve. Her memory's blocked out the worst parts of it and she fears if the whole truth is ever revealed, she'll somehow end up incriminated.
Her worst nightmare comes true when fellow survivor Steph, a formidable TV personality, plans to produce a movie of Scarlet Christmas.....a movie in which all the facts of what really happened that night (and who did what to whom) will be laid out for a worldwide audience.
How could I ever resist a set up like that? As Charlie's carefully perfect life starts to come undone, author Jenny Hollander carefully rations out nuggets of clues about the murders......which naturally guarantees us to keep reading till we get the whole story.
What I liked most.......unlike other books in this particular genre, it doesn't slip into that sinkhole of internal monologues that forces a reader to skim through the interminable blah-blah-blah of potentially unreliable narrators. It's a zippy read, filled with dialogue and the prose nails these characters with knowing observation. In other words a genuine page turner from beginning to end.
But what I found myself going 'hmmm' about was the final big reveal and epilogue wrap-up. Satisfying for sure, but some of the motives and behavior struck me as unclear, not fully explained......and to be honest, maybe just a bit far-fetched and tough to swallow. For me, that's why I knocked it down from 5 stars to 4.
I can't deny though that "Everyone Who Can Forgive Me' kept me riveted and entertained. It did have me swiping through the e-pages at maximum speed to see what happened and uncover the worst of those 'Scarlet Christmas' secrets.
So I'd sincerely advise librarians and booksellers to not forget to include this one in your displays of books about mass murder survivors trying to make sense of their trauma....and the elusive truth of it.

I was very happy to be approved for this e-arc. It was good for a debut, but I feel this should be considered more of a mystery than a thriller. The writing at points just did not keep my interest, it could be because I did not read in one or two sittings as I usually do. There is an unreliable narrator, but parts seemed a bit disjointed. Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins for a copy of this e-arc in exchange for my honest review.
3 stars

The ominous title of Jenny Hollander’s upcoming Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead caught my attention and the description caused my interest to multiply. Hollander’s novel explores the ways that trauma shapes who we become – possibly even to the point where we don’t recognize ourselves or what we’re capable of. Though a pretty good example of why I don’t care for first person narration, it’s use does allow for a decently compelling presentation of someone pushed to their breaking point mentally as they’re forced to confront and finally process an extreme and formative trauma. I found the execution to be clunky at times (key details a little too obviously withheld for drama rather than because it makes sense and reveals that were underwhelming given the drawn-out buildup), but the main character’s desperation and cracking emotional state were compelling and a few of the twists actually worked rather well... even if the whole ultimately felt a little uneven.

It’s been almost ten years since the Christmas Eve that changed Charlotte “Charlie” Colbert’s life and she’s done everything in her power to put it behind her. She’s the editor in chief of an illustrious publication, she’s engaged to an old-money publishing heir, and she hasn’t had a breakdown in years. But then word gets out that one of her former classmates from the Carroll University School of Journalism – one of the few with a resume more impressive than her own – is working to produce a major film about the events of the so-called “Scarlet Christmas” and it just might topple Charlie’s carefully constructed existence. Renewed public attention and deeper delving into the investigation threaten to expose inconsistencies with the story Charlie told the police that night. Pushing herself to the brink, Charlie struggles to remember what happened during the holes in her memory so she knows just how large a role she played in the deaths of several of her fellow students and what she’ll have to do to protect herself, her family, and her life if what she remembers proves to be as ugly as she fears.

Unreliable narrators open up a lot of opportunities when it comes to storytelling (I always end up flashing back to college class discussions of Lolita whenever I think about them and what you can do with them). The potential for what an unreliable narrator can do is almost certainly a contributing factor when writers choose first-person narration as the approach they want to take. But there’s using the approach effectively and then there’s using it as a crutch to make the story work. For most of Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead, Charlie is an effective (if slightly annoying and frustrating) unreliable first-person narrator. The story reaches a point, however, where the information she’s leaving out stretches believability and crosses a line where it only serves to make a twist as dramatic as possible and that’s where the approach faltered and stopped working for me as a reader – it undermined elements of the story that carry an intensity regardless of just how much of a surprise it is to readers and, in the process, distracts more than it enhances.

There were so many elements of the story that left me wanting more. Most of the time, it was in good ways but there were times where it was because things felt a little underdeveloped. For instance, Charlie’s guilt over what her family back in England has gone through because of her is one key factor driving her actions and it’s relatable but a lot of the relationship and her worries are explained rather than shown (or there’s so much explanation layered on top of the showing that it drains the emotional core of the interactions). In general, I think more reflection on the immediate aftermath of the Scarlet Christmas events earlier in the story would have helped. Of course, the narrative constraints of the established “flashbacks” really centering on the lead-up to that night and pretty much anything else that falls between the “then” sections and the “now” sections staying surface level do make sense in a lot of ways. It keeps the timelines distinct and clear for the reader and the sense of detachment does reflect the ways that Charlie has changed in the wake of the tragedy (it also helped preserve a few of the bigger “twists” that came later in the story by continuing to keep the reader in the dark). But, to me, it made it feel hollow in a way I didn’t care for.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead will be available February 6, 2024.

Nine years ago, Charlie survived a bloody tragedy that stole many lives. Now, one of her grad school friends has decided to make a movie about the events. Only, Charlie doesn't want the story told.

This was a good thriller! I liked the back and forth as Charlie seeks to relive the events that led up to the tragedy so that she can deal with it while trying so hard to get the movie and press to stop in the present. There are a lot of characters to follow in this one, but they all work as you work your way through what happened.
Not many of the characters are super likable in the present, but this is by design. You don't know who to trust, and that's a good thing. I did find Charlie interesting. She has a lot of different loyalties and while some of her reactions are hard to swallow, you can see where she is coming from.

All in all, this was a good and well structured thriller!

Thank you to the author and publisher for the gifted copy!

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

This psychological thriller is a fast-paced twisty ride! Nine years ago, during what is dubbed as ‘Scarlet Christmas’, Charlie survives a brutal bloody knife attack on her graduate school’s campus. During the tragic event, Charlie blacked out and only remembers bits and pieces of what unfolded; and part of what she can remember, she’s never told the police. Readers are brought forward to Charlie’s new meticulously crafted life as a powerhouse magazine publisher, engaged to her supportive partner, and completely out of touch with any other of her peers from her journalism grad school days. Only now, someone is threatening to have ‘new evidence’ and ‘new details’’ of shocking coverup and is planning to produce a movie detailing what truly happened that night. Told between Charlie’s current efforts to prevent the film from being made, and flashbacks to the months leading up to the massacre, readers are on a frantic quest to learn more about who died, who survived, as well as who led the attack. Full of tense flashbacks, shocking twists, secrets, lies, and betrayals presented neatly through an unreliable narrator struggling with PTSD, this thriller was one I could not set aside! Buckle up and enjoy this atmospheric and dark academia book.

Thank you to Minotaur Books for my advanced copy as well as Macmillan Audio for my advanced listener’s copy; I did a tandem read and the audiobook deeply enriched my reading experience!

I was not crazy about this one. For a book that waits until the very end to reveal the actual events of the traumatic and life changing murderous night that is the center of the entire story, I have to say I was disappointed. I feel weird saying that, but I guess after all of the build up I was expecting something a bit more dramatic and horrific, and not something that (sadly) is in a newspaper somewhere in the country most days of the week. The book was also too long to justify this ending, and the twist at the end that I didn't see coming but also didn't really care about.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead is a satisfying debut psychological thriller that explores the after effects of a traumatic event at an elite NYC graduate journalism program. Sophisticated and icy Charlie Colbert comes from a privileged British family and is a driven, editor in chief of C magazine, a sub section of The Chronicle., She is soon to marry handsome Tripp, from a powerful rich family. However, it is not as idyllic as it appears and Charlie is plagued by survivors guilt and has questioned her own sanity as she tries to navigate the release of a new movie on the 10 year anniversary of the tragic event named Scarlett Christmas..

What I liked:
-unreliable narrator and non linear timelines
-posh, sophisticated world of the privileged in NYC
-dark academia elements from flashbacks during Charlie’s time at journalism school
-some big twists and turns
-use of news clippings, therapy sessions ,texts etc to aid in the story telling

What I didn’t: like:
- the abrupt ending that didn’t match the engaging plot, it left me feeling disappointed hence the reason I removed a star from my review

My rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Trigger warning-mental illness, addiction, mass attacks

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press Minotaur Books for this eARC that will be published February 6 2024.