I love Mindy McGinnis! This one really had me guessing as to what direction it would go for awhile, which is perfect! I don't want to figure everything out in the first couple chapters. I am happy to see more books featuring mental health in realistic way. I highly recommend!

*ARC REVIEW

Wow! Another epic read, not that I’m surprised.

Again tacking difficult subjects such as mental illness is not an easy feat but Mindy does it in the most poetic ways.

Must read!

This book constantly keeps your heart rate up! I absolutely loved the characters and the fact that you could truly connect with them. I wish there was a book two for this!

I really enjoyed Mindy McGinnis ‘ last three books, which were all 5 star reads for me. This one was difficult to get into as the main plot really starts around the 50% mark. The topics involved in the plot are also pretty hard to read- SA, mental illness, murder and suicide.
Neely hears voices and sees monsters. She gets a job as a tour guide for caverns. The monsters don’t bother her here, until her crush Mila is murdered. Then she sees the monsters everywhere. Who murdered Mila? Could Neely somehow be responsible?

Monsters lurking around every corner, dark caverns that carry secrets, and a murder that shocks the community. Mindy is ready to set the world ablaze and never look back.

I know when it comes to Mindy she never disappoints and this one is no different. She gets deep, emotional, and dark with this story and it still gives me goosebumps.

Neely is not your typical MC but she makes things interesting in this book. Her mental illness makes her see things that aren't really there at times and it throws you through a loop throughout this read. Your brain works overtime trying to figure out what truly is happening and I was loving every second of that.

I loved the buildup to the mysterious death. The friendship between two characters that were so different was one of my favorite parts but then you sit and think about what happened between them and if any of that actually took place. My brain exploded with overthinking. It made me giddy. It was perfect.

The only thing that held me back was piecing this entire thing together for that to be the result. I guessed it within the first part of the book and that always disappoints me. There was just something that stuck out that made me figure out the mystery quickly.

Under This Red Rock was a fantastic read. You'll love the uniqueness of this just as much as I did.

Mindy McGinnis is an absolute auto-buy for me, and I’ll read anything she writes. Under This Red Rock is another superb outing from McGinnis. This one is especially dark and gruesome, and I’m not sure I’ll ever want to reread it, but I was absolutely rapt, staying up until midnight and waking up early to finish it.

What I love so much about McGinnis’s books is not just her trademark grit and realism and unflinching look into tough topics, but also that she treats her characters with complete compassion. Neely is a standout McGinnis main character. (She may be the funniest, too.) I was invested in her from the very first page, and it was Neely who propelled me to the midpoint when the terrible murder at the center of the book sets up a propulsive mystery in the second half.

This book was just so good. I’ll be haunted a very long time.

Mindy McGinnis stans unite

Also... FINALLY... after reading her books for like 6 years straight... the wlw UNDERTONES have become OVERTONES

Neely has had a rough one... her dad had mental illness and left, her mom died in a car accident, and her only other nuclear family member, her brother, has recently killed himself. Both she and her brother also have similar mental illnesses as their father - they either see and/or hear things that aren't there. Neely has a couple recurring characters in her life that aren't real.

She lives with her grandparents and gets a summer job at these caverns she always visits. Underground is the only place she knows for sure she won't hear her voices, plus she's good at giving the tours because she knows the place like the back of her hand.

She gets to know some of her coworkers, one of whom was her late brother's best friend, and one of whom is a girl she ends up really liking.

And well, something happens that's in the synopsis, but I didn't read the synopsis, so I was fully surprised and I hope you may allow yourself to be as well.

I think this book is a really interesting look into mental illness, the way things devolve over time when left untreated, and the way your brain keeps you from trusting yourself when you're deep in a mental health crisis. I think there are a few little twists that are really shocking and it's just generally engrossing.

I love Mindy McGinnis's writing and she always is unhinged which is what I love about her lol. This is definitely a new direction for her, but at the same time it's not, because her stuff is always pretty dark and painful lol. I don't know that this would be where I told a non-fan to start out in her body of work, but if you love her books, you'll love this one just as good.

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books, and Mindy McGinnis for the opportunity to read Under This Red Rock in exchange for an honest review.

Mindy McGinnis hits the young adult mystery genre again! After her thrilling The Initial Insult duology, McGinnis returns again with Under This Red Rock, a stand-alone young adult mystery surrounding an incident in a cave.

Neely has a secret: monsters, strange entities that are not quite ghosts, just psychological visions only she can see and hear, follow her. Some are more serious, while others are witty jokesters. But there is one place they seem unable to follow: the caverns. With a history of mental illness and family tragedy, a quiet escape from her monsters is well warranted, so she obtains a job as a tour guide in the caverns. Not only are her monsters unable to follow, but she seems to enjoy the job itself. It's certainly interesting!

In her job as a tour guide, Neely meets Mila, a girl that embodies beauty and strength. As their friendship grows closer, Neely finds that she may have deeper feelings for Mila. Wanting to follow her lead and make an impression, Neely goes to a party with Mila and tries some drugs (maybe the monsters will ebb away?). But the opposite happens!

The next day, Mila is found brutally murdered (the description is pretty gruesome!). Neely's recollection of the night before is a blur. Did something happen while they were under the influence? Is Neely to blame for the murder of the girl she liked? Neely takes it upon herself to try and solve Mila's murder, though she learns some dark secrets about the other kids in town that she wish she never learned.

Yet another interesting young adult mystery novel. As a stand-alone, even better! The plot is intriguing, and following Neely as she aims to solve the murder is a fun step-by-step. I absolutely love how the end went and how everything was revealed.  A novel to recommend to a teen audience and lovers of mystery.

Mindy McGinnis is an auto-read favorite of mine -- she's the master of balancing on a knife's edge between disturbing and disgusting and I LOVE IT. She writes f-ed up, rage-filled teenage girls better than anyone, and our girl Neely is capital-F f-ed up. Her dad was mentally unstable and bolted when she was a kid, her mom died in front of her in a car crash, and her brother recently died, gruesomely. Oh, and she sees monsters/ghosts who harass her -- telling her lies, incessantly asking for water, and making her yell "shitbird" multiple times a day. The only place she gets any peace is deep underground in her town's tourist attraction cave. Unfortunately, trouble follows her into the cave and she loses yet another person.

This book was weirdly funny, deeply sad, and kind of all over the place. I never quite felt like I understood what was going on, so this wasn't my favorite by McGinnis. That said I will be first in line to get my grubby hands on whatever she writes next because she's amazingr.

The opening sentence in this one is genuinely amazing. I had recently finished McGinnis' "A Long Stretch of Bad Days," so when I saw a new release from them, I jumped on the opportunity. This book will fall into the DNF category that sometimes happens with me: I think it will be important for the target audience (teens/ya), but I don't feel the need or have the desire to finish the story. I will check out other works by McGinnis, and would request any new releases in the future.

First, I do adore Mindy McGinnis. Even though I have visited a crystal cavern and could connect to this large aspect of the story, I do not see my students relating to this even if it was extremely informative about this underground world.
Nevertheless, I do believe there is an audience. This was an interesting undertaking.. I appreciated McGinnis's cleverness, idioms, and sexual innuendos. However, I believe this may be over the heads of some young adults who are the intended audience. It also moved rather slow. It really caught my interest when the mystery aspect was introduced rather than the belaboring of the main character Neely's situation which includes monsters in her head (but does she personally give voice to those voices in her head and essentially talk to herself?) This also includes a brother who was also afflicted with "monsters" having committed suicide, a mother who died, and living with grandparents who she does not want to disappoint with her mental health or her sexual identity crisis.
Neely gets a job in a crystal cavern-the monsters don't follow her underground for some reason. She also has been visiting these caverns for a long time--she knows more than anyone. She is enamored with the head tour guide, who forges a friendship with Neely though very straight. The dynamics of the staff is far from smooth and when a staff party gets out of control resulting in drug use leading to hallucinations and ultimately a death (now it gets interesting) Neely is not sure if it was her that caused the death. Was it? or is there something more? great twist and tie in for the end. 3 1/2 stars
Thank you NetGalley for the preview.

This is a well written, hard to read, moving, disturbing book about a struggle with mental illness and finding her place in the world. There are a lot of trigger warnings so it would work for class discussions but someone reading it alone might not have the necessary support. 4.5

This book was absolutely wild and I truly mean that. There is some horrific stuff going on but the idea of things (being in the Ultimate Dark, Tight Spaces, Men) are usually implied off screen so to speak. Also, if you can't handle animal death/torture, might want to avoid it.

I really enjoyed the pacing and the payoff of this book and it would make a great addition to any reading challenge involving horror/lgbt topics. Our lead is Queen of the Unreliable due to her own trauma and mental illness and while you want to root for her you DO sometimes find yourself wondering if she is truly believing her own story.
I can't speak for the authenticity of the representation of mental illness and we never really know what if anything it is that Neely has going on but she IS hearing/seeing things and it IS genetic based on her family so who knows. I do think it was at least a little bit respectfully done. But again, I am not one to speak on it.
The book is sapphic but only just and I do hope McGinnis explores this combination between sapphic longing and horror again soon.

My only real con is that the ending feels a bit too abrupt to me. I just felt like for as long as we were in sick Neely's head, we were owed a bit more of recovering Neely.

Thanks to netgalley for the ARC! 3.5 stars I felt like the book was not exactly what the description said. I had a hard time figuring out at first what was going on and if I was going to be able to stick with this one. Some of the things Neely said and did were very cringe, but I did find the multiple personalities a fascinating part of her character. In terms of the mystery and murder, it did keep me guessing for quite a while, and I found I was more sad by the ending than anything. This one wasn’t really for me, but it wasn’t bad.fyi profanity, graphic murder, talk of rape, mental illness, etc. There’s a lot in this one.

Neely, still reeling from her brother's suicide, deals with her own mental illness every day while trying to appear normal to everyone else. When the voices in her head become too loud, she can find solace in the nearby caverns because they can't follow her there. In an effort to escape the voices, Neely gets a job at the caverns as a tour guide.

At her new job, Neely meets Mila, a beautiful older girl who Neely instantly feels attracted to. At an after-hours party, Neely finally gets a chance to be alone with Mila exploring the caverns, but wakes up the next morning in her own bed with no recollection of what happened once they went into the caverns. And after a weekend of not hearing from her, Mila is found dead.

Neely's hallucinations are worse, and she has a hard time distinguishing what is real. Suddenly, her coworkers suspect her because she was the last person seen with Mila at the party, and Neely starts to doubt herself. Could she have been responsible?

In true Mindy McGinnis fashion, Under This Red Rock is full of action and suspense. She authentically writes the story of Neely's mental illness, and she makes readers feel the anxiety that Neely feels when confronting the voices in her head. There are some gruesome details that have become McGinnis's signature style, and they will please readers who are fans of her work.

The only dissatisfaction I experienced when reading this book was that it ended too abruptly. I was left with many questions about what happened from the last page to the epilogue. It tied up too quickly without details about how everything happened in the end. I immediately wanted to email her and ask her to give me a couple more chapters!

Under This Red Rock is a force of nature. Mindy McGinnis hits it out of the park again.

Neely lives with her grandparents after her mother's death in a car accident as a child. In an effort to help her feel like less of a burden, and to get away from the monsters in her head, she gets a job working as a tour guide in the caverns - where her monsters can't follow.

Neely is immediately entranced by veteran tour guide, Mila, and begins to think about her constantly. But when Mila is found brutally murdered, all Neely's monsters get teeth. Stuck in her own head and unsure how to get out, Neely starts questioning what she knows. About her family history, about what she thought she knew about her deceased brother, and about how deep the monsters in her head can actually go.

Under This Red Rock is an incredible book about what is real and what is imaginary, leaving readers with questions about how deeply we can really know another person. Or ourselves.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a wild ride for me. I loved everything about it.
I would definitely recommend it.
10/10

A psychological mystery about a girl who is dealing with the death of her brother and feels like she can see and hear ghosts.... and has become the number one suspect in her new coworker's murder. Neely can see ghosts, she's haunted by them, from the little girl under her bed to the man in her closet... and now to her brother who has recently died. Her family has a history of mental illness and when her brother committed suicide, Neely is still reeling from everything. She decides to take a new job as a tour guide in the caverns of Ohio, it'll help keep the ghosts away. There she meets Mila, a gorgeous, strong, and kind coworker who becomes close to her. Yet one day Neely's hallucinations escalate at a staff party after she takes some drugs... only to then find Mila's brutally murdered body. Now Neely is the number one suspect but her memory is vague and her grip on reality is tenuous at best. She has to figure out who the truly killer is, even if it means its her. This was such a unique murder mystery because our narrator is so unreliable and her grip on reality is slipping. She barely knows whats going on and she can't be relied on to give an accurate account, which only makes the mystery so much more fun to try and figure out. I loved how odd and weird this one was, and the mystery was a fun one. Definitely recommend for fans of mystery books with unreliable narrators!

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

5 Stars! Mindy McGinnis has a brilliant and disturbed mind when it comes to writing.

This story follows Neely as she deals with the death of her mother and brother. She manages to get a job as a tour guide in a cave system where the monsters in her head can't bother her.

I love that YA is getting thrillers that are interesting and not just involving social media. McGinnis created a character who experiences mental health, while also not making it their full identity. Anything with caves creeps me out and I think that just added to the atmosphere.