I loved this one, I was reading from behind my fingers most of the time, I can't imagine what I would do in this situation, I don't think I would leave the house again 😭

I love @but_katy_did_it and I can safely say, I’m a huge fan of her books. This has been a brilliant read. I was immediately pulled in and couldn’t help but devour this in just one sitting.

Molly is a hot mess, but aren’t they just the best characters. I loved the journey through this one with her. I found myself pulled In and unwilling to put this down.

Brent has given me a lot of laugh out loud moments with this one. It’s unique and fun. Brent has transported me with this one. I found myself hooked.

I love how real the characters have felt. Brent has a real talent for making them ooze from the pages.

This is perfectly paced and I didnt want it to end. I loved this book from beginning to end. Absolutely brilliant. I have no hesitation in recommending this one.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

After really enjoying her debut book, I was excited to read this one. I hadn’t read what this was about and was going on the title. It wasn’t what I was expecting but I really enjoyed it.

We meet Molly, who wakes up with the hangover from hell and a stranger in her bed. She thinks her day can’t get any worse but boy was she wrong.

She has gone viral overnight for all the wrong reasons but she is the last the know until she turns up at work.

All she wants to do is talk to her best friend and roommate Posey but she can’t get a hold of her. When she gets home she decides to check her room and en-suite to see if she’s gone away but what she finds is her best friend dead. The police think it’s an accident but Molly isn’t convinced.

Molly decides to investigate herself and see what Posey had been upto before she died. There were some unexpected suspects and plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing.

I really enjoy Katy’s writing and would recommend reading her books. If you enjoyed How to kill men and get away with it, then I think you will really enjoy this one.

Having enjoyed Katy Brent’s debut, I was so excited to read her second and it didn’t disappoint! I loved the mystery throughout the book and how each story weaved its way into each other. I also really appreciated the modernised setting (yes I know I’m writing this in 2024) but the viral video and internet sleuthing was great. I loved Molly’s character, and whilst I wasn’t quite right with my theories, it kept me well and truly guessing - something which I fully appreciated!

A great second book and a real twisty tale!

I hadn't read Katy Brent before and this was such a fun, wild read. The writing was so vivid and snappy, I can really see this as a great film or series. The way she handles all the awful things that happen to Molly are so eviscerating, you really feel them and the horror of everything that happens (and a lot does). The twist was great, but the very final twist was less believable for me.

The Murder After the Night Before

Katy Brent

I am a huge fan of Katy Brent so I was bloody ecstatic when I was approved for this one.

It did not disappoint, following Molly after a particularly bad night wakes up to find her best friend Posey dead in the bath, The police say it was an accident Molly is convinced it is Murder….
We follow Molly as she tries to uncover not only what happened to Posey, but what happened to herself that fateful night. Slowly the truth unravels ….

I love Katy’s characterisation. I fell in love with Molly and felt her vulnerability, her grief and her love for Posey. I love how she felt Posey and her mum were with her every step of the way, I’d call that her intuition and how she felt she had to fight for Posey, in doing this she was fighting for herself aswell. I felt the book showed us a real image of what social media is like and how misogynistic and utterly damaging it can be to a woman's life and career, no one mentions the man in the video…. Until much later anyway, so it was very on topic.
I did not see the end coming at all and was shocked how it all came together.

I think the way Katy deals with such raw, emotive and hard topics such as grief and mental health in a comical way is incredible, her style of writing is so unique and I will never stop recommending her books to friends.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.

This was a quirky, witty + fun read, jam packed with twists + turns but also humour, sarcasm and tones of sexism, feminism + grief. I loved Brent’s HOW TO KILL MEN AND GET AWAY WITH IT and this had very similar vibes. Murder, scandal, mystery, dark comedy + a bunch of suspicious characters made for a pacy + gripping read. There was a big focus on the dark side of social media + the violence and judgments women face on a daily basis, which added a lot of depth to the plot. I was also convinced I had the murderer sussed but was shocked!

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝐻𝑄 𝐷𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤. 𝐴𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑦 𝑜𝑤𝑛. 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝐼𝐺 (@𝑟𝑒𝑑ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙), 𝐺𝑅 & 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ.

LOVED LOVED this dark twisty read, just enjoyed how her days unraveled after a night of excessive drinking. Second book by Katy Brent that I have enjoyed immensely!

Thank you to NetGalley & publisher for the copy.

I've not read Katy Brent's first book but I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Murder After the Night Before. I loved our lead character Molly from the off - the opening chapter made me laugh out loud - and I found her to be completely relatable and sympathetic. Her narration is really funny throughout the book - even at the times she is upset or scared. I felt so sorry for her situation and that she seemed to have no one to turn to for help or support. The twitter abuse she suffers is sadly all too believable.

There's a lot of tension at the start of the book with Molly on the back foot with her hangover, strange man visitor and lateness for work. It only gets worse for her from here on in and I felt mortified and devastated for her as she catches up to her viral infamy and flatmate's death. The book has a lot to say about 'trial by social media' and how women in particular are treated on X/Twitter or TikTok and the like and in real life.

I was completely invested in the murder mystery side of the book and with Molly all the way in her investigation. I liked the way she pushed on when everything seemed against her, managing to rise above her notoriety and what people thought of her. The supporting characters were all three-dimensional but it was difficult to know who she could trust. There are a few twists and turns before the ending and, although I guessed one tiny part, I did not work out whodunit. I really enjoyed this book and would definitely read more from Katy Brent.

A good thriller. Perfect for a holiday read. Nothing too heavy or complicated, just a relatable protagonist, real-enough characters and an enjoyable plot. If you find this at the airport, don't hesitate to pick it up. It will provide good entertainment.

Molly Monroe is a 32-year-old woman working as a journalist for a tween magazine. During a work Christmas party, she gets extremely drunk, and wakes up next to a man she’s never met before.

She heads in to work where her boss shows her a video in which she’s portrayed in less than a favourable light. The clip is gaining momentum on social media, so Molly is told to go home and rest.

She’s desperate to speak to her flatmate and best friend, Posey, who is also a journalist. Molly knows that Posey has left for work that morning as she’s heard the front door closing.

She tries to ring Posey to no avail. When she rings her workplace, she is told that Posey hasn’t turned up for work that day. Who was the person leaving the flat?

Molly decides to check Posey’s bedroom and that’s where she finds her best friend’s body… Police dismiss the case as accidental death, however, Molly is adamant that Posey was killed.

Now she needs to find out who killed her best friend.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked Molly as a character, she was multi-layered, as she’s suffered trauma as a young girl and never really recovered from it. She was trying to mask all her issues with alcohol, which obviously didn’t help her in the long run.

Despite never meeting Posey, I admired her grit and determination to uncover the truth. Posey was working on a case of a missing girl and she wouldn’t give up until she found out what happened.

The book is laced with humour, however, woven in-between are the issues of consent, sexual assault, and violence against women.

I can’t wait for Katy Brent’s next novel.

Molly Monroe wakes up with the worst hangover of her life and a man she's never seen before in her bed. She sets off for work - as a writer for a tween girls' magazine - only to be greeted with the news that she has gone viral - and it's not for her piece on the difference between llamas and alpacas. She has been caught on camera performing oral sex on an unidentified man, in the middle of a busy London street. Feeling mortified and violated, with no memory of the incident, Molly is sent home by her boss and is desperate to talk through what happened with her flatmate and best friend, Posey. There’s just one problem though: Posey has been dead since the night before. Molly is convinced that Posey has been a victim of foul play, but no one will take 'Mucky Molly' (as she has been christened by the tabloids) seriously, least of all the police. Molly sets out to find out who killed Posey, and why, while trying to piece together her lost night. Could it all be connected?

The Murder After the Night Before is an energetic gallop of a novel, which drags the reader along at breackneck pace, snatching up clues en route before unceremoniously dumping them in a heap in the final chapters. It is the type of mystery which relies on the main character to be chronically inobservant and the police totally incompetent, both parties taking an inordinate amount of time to join the dots even when they might as well be numbered. The book weighs in at 336 pages, but would've been half that had the protagonist not been so unbelievably slow on the uptake.

The viral video which sets the plot in motion looms large over the narrative - an unlikely premise which made me deeply uncomfortable. The author has chosen to open each chapter with a tweet aimed at the protagonist - most of them crude and/or threatening, and I found this device totally off-putting, though I suppose this is the point.

I commend the author for trying to write a thriller with a conscience, highlighting the persistence of slut-shaming and the way 'women's sexuality is still used to shame us into submission and obedience'. She calls out the gleeful way in which the media seizes an opportunity to put a woman in her place and the misogyny which still runs rife in our culture; the man's face was not captured in Molly's video and the internet's vitriol seems entirely focused on her. There are allusions to the phenomenon of Missing White Woman Syndrome, and the Madonna-Whore Dichotomy which dictates that the woman who writes about narwhals for preteen girls cannot be the woman performing a sex act in the street. However, at times these themes feel rather forced, with female characters taking the most unlikely moments to start spouting half-baked feminist rhetoric in a very inorganic way.

Molly as a character didn't really work for me. She is gullible and trusting in a way that doesn't jibe with her being a woman in her 30s living in London; she reads more like 22 than 32. She is quick to allign herself with a man she has just met, and, once her investigation gets underway, she merrily shows her hand to anyone who takes an interest, and casually leaves crucial evidence lying around unattended. At one point, Molly proclaims, 'I'm a complete idiot,' and this is by far her most self-aware moment. The author doesn't seem to know how to establish character and backstory so resorts to a rambling inner monologue, topped up with an exposition-heavy chapter at the end of the book, which answers some of the reader's questions about Molly but at such a late stage that it's difficult to care. Meanwhile, I found it hard to be invested in Posey's death because I didn't have the chance to get to know her while she was alive.

Molly's investigation unfolds through a series of extremely clunky exposition devices, whereby crucial evidence pretty much falls into her lap. The convenient device of having her grieving brain keep Posey alive to aid her in her investigation means that Molly does vanishingly little thinking herself, and when she does have her own ideas, they lead to preposterous scenes - one in the chapel of rest springs to mind.

The conclusion is rushed, with big questions just quickly explained away, ridiculous contrivances propelling the plot to its denouement and lazy exposition packed into a couple of chapters.

I am sure that this book will be well received by many, but for me the main character and the plotting were too much to overcome.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.

3.5⭐

I went into this thinking it would have some dark humour and witty elements to it, but it was actually a pretty deep thriller with difficult yet important subjects at the core.

** Make sure you check trigger warnings with this one.

Molly wakes up with a stranger in her bed, not having any memory of what happened the night before. She heads into work feeling like everyone is acting weird around her and finds out something awful happened. It just keeps getting worse from there.

I felt deeply for Molly's situation and felt that as the book progressed, we got to experience a journey of her moving from giving up to fighting back.

I really enjoyed the twists and connections, some I didn't see coming, but overall I didn't feel shocked in the way I want to be when reading a thriller.

That said, I still recommend this for people who enjoy thrillers that include relevant topics and that popcornesque feel! I'd definitely read Katy's books in future!

Thanks to HQStories and Netgalley for providing this ARC for review. All opinions are my own.

Something bad happened last night. My best friend Posey is dead. The police think it was a tragic accident. I know she was murdered.

I’ve woken up with the hangover from hell, a stranger in my bed, and I’ve gone viral for the worst reasons.

There’s only one thing stopping me from dying of shame. I need to find a killer.

But after last night, I can’t remember a thing…

From the author of How to Kill Men and Get Away With It, don’t miss this wickedly witty and utterly addictive novel, perfect for fans of Bella Mackie, Dawn O’Porter and Killing Eve.

Katy writes in a way that draws you in to a story immediately. There's no slow build up, no superfluous and drawn out detail and this makes for an exciting read from the get go.

A viral video. A missing teen and a murdered flatmate. How are they linked? Molly wakes up the morning after the night before feeling worse than she ever has. And who is the handsome stranger in her bed?

As she gets to her office, she feels paranoid, why are people acting so strangely? When she finds out why, her whole world comes crashing down. But things are only going to go from bad to worse.

Fast-paced, and a definite page-turner, I enjoyed this book, but I did feel a bit disconnected from the plot as it became more and more convoluted.

Amazing book!
I was thoroughly engaged throughout this book and I didn't want to put it down! The author captured my attention from the get go! Five stars from me :)

Sassy, smart and entertaining whilst also discussing the dark side of social media with a fabulous main character - a great read!

Once again, Brent has created an entertaining read, a wild ride of a book that somehow manages to combine mystery and plenty of twists with some interesting social commentary as well as a generous sprinkling of (often dark) humour.

Molly Monroe wakes up one morning with the mother of all hangovers and a strange man in her bed to discover a video of her she has no memory of has gone viral - and not in a good way! As if that wasn’t bad enough, she finds her flatmate and best friend Posey dead in the bath.

This is a fast paced read as the somewhat chaotic but loveable Molly takes a somewhat chaotic approach to proving that Posey’s death was not the accidental death the police seem to think it is. You’ll find yourself rooting for Molly, flawed but relatable and determined to get justice for her friend. With no shortage of suspects, there is plenty going on and the twists and turns keep coming. With the tension relieved thanks to some laugh out loud humour, this is one of those books you will read in a couple of sittings keen to know how it ends.

Just when I thought Katy discussed everything there is about the dark side of social media, she strikes again (with a BETTER plot!) HTKM will always remain my favorite but this one JUST hit the right spot (I had to wait till the paperback is released in my country and go through again before writing this) and I love EVERYTHING about TMATNB! It almost felt like *I* was in Molly's place. The subtle humor, the twists and turns, the cliffhangers at the end of every chapter...I'm telling you, this book has it all

The humor, the mystery, the darkness and the drama: all - on point. 😙🤌🏽
From ‘just one chapter’ to binge read. I devoured this book!
Although I was already laughing out loud the first chapter, there were also super serious and emotional topics. In my opinion this was all well balanced.
The main character Molly Monroe is a hot mess but oh so likeable, the other characters are divers and felt real.
Super gripping, fast paced, fun and unpredicatable: I absolutely LOVED ‘The Murder After the Night Before.’
Favorite book of the year (so far) and maybe even one of my favorite books, ever. Katy Brent, applause 👏🏽
— Rating: 5★

Thank you @hqstories @harpercollinsuk for providing this book for review consideration via @netgalley. All opinions are my own. 🩷