Title: Everyone Who Can Forgive me is Dead
Author: Jenny Hollander
Narrator: Marisa Calin
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Genre: Women's Fiction
Pub Date: February 6, 2024
My Rating: 2.5 Stars
Pages: 304
Charlotte Colbert tries to piece together the memories of an awful experience that occurred 10 years ago, that ended with three deaths.
Charlie is a survivor from that terrible incident known as the "Scarlet Christmas".
She reinvents herself by changing her physical appearance and also extensive therapy.
Now she is an editor-in-chief of a major magazine, engaged to Tripp.
News of a movie threatens now picture-perfect life.

I struggled with this. I found Charlotte unlikeable I wasn’t sure if it was Charlotte or the narrator’s performance.
I hung in there but to me it was only okay.

Want to thank NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this early Audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for February 6, 2024.

This book was a hard one for me to rate. This book took off running and had me engaged up until the last 20 percent of the book. As it began to come together, pieces explained, and loose ends wrapping up, I found myself disengaging and losing interest. Still a good book to keep me entertained and listening while trying to get work done. A solid 3,5 stars for this one. I wish it could have maintained energy to the end to make it 4. Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC of this audiobook.

Keeping track of the characters was difficult when there was no real meaningful character development coupled with choppy writing. The audiobook narration was irritatingly hard to follow with the cringey change in accents. The twists weren’t anything memorable or thrilling.

This book definitely won’t be for everyone, but if you’re looking for a very slow burn storyline with multiple characters and timelines - this might be the one for you. I’d recommend reading it over listening though as it’s very hard to follow via audio.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ as I think audio really affected my thoughts on this book, and this author has potential.

Thank you to NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to listen to this ARC audiobook in exchange for my honest thoughts.

What an interesting book! I don’t know if I liked it or really liked it.

The story was great and the characters had me all over the place trying to figure them all out. I was fully invested and loved the way the story unfolded. I didn’t see the full twist coming but I was pleasantly surprised to see what I had guess was correct. Right until the very end you are left guessing and in awe.

Thanks so much NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the advanced audiobook

2/5

There was nothing very captivating or thrilling in the storyline, and it seemed like a poor take on an already recycled theme. I did like the title, cover, and some of the writing. Otherwise, this was my first disappointing read of the year.

I had a jars time with this audiobook. The narrator's way of speaking is overly rushed and made it hard to follow what was going on.
I'm sure the actual story is fine, but the odd way of rapid speaking ruined it for me.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this ARC

Sadly, this is a debut I was very excited about, and it ended up being a huge flop. It's basically like re reading The Luckiest Girl Alive, and not in a good way. As a supposed "thriller," this lacked any thrill. It struggled to engage or maintain my interest. To begin with, the characters lacked substantial development, with the author relying on superficial traits like hair descriptions or their accents, making it challenging to differentiate and connect with them. The attempt to convey pronunciation nuances became bothersome, adding to the difficulty of keeping track of the characters. The romantic relationship between Charlie and her fiancé Tripp felt unconvincing, given their lack of knowledge about crucial aspects of each other's pasts and future aspirations. Despite a significant revelation occurring at the halfway point, it failed to contribute meaningfully to the narrative, leaving a sense of confusion and inconsistency.

This is about a young woman named Charlie who was one of the victims/survivors of the "Scarlet Christmas". She doesn't remember what happened that night, she blacked out, but she lied to the police when she gave her statement. Now it's a decade later and her new and shiny life being a NY editor engaged to a man from a prominent family is at risk when she finds out a movie is being made about the ordeal. Charlie is worried about internet sleuths and other obsessed parties putting together the missing pieces of the night and finding out Charlie lied. The problem is, Charlie still doesn't remember what happened, so this book is her present day confusion coupled with flashbacks, guided by her therapist to unearth her trauma.

I don't understand what went wrong with this book? It has every element I enjoy. Potential unreliable narrator, past and present timelines, a narrator with secrets, some mild romance, and murder. However, the writing style wasn't enjoyable for me. Pair that with a really bad audiobook with a narrator attempting so many different accents and trying to be breathy at the same time, and I did not enjoy this experience.

Even though I found the writing to be choppy and I was constantly confused (especially over audio, the dialogue would jump from person to person without a break in between), I didn't DNF this. I was still intrigued and invested in the story because with a tragedy called "Scarlet Christmas" and all of the other elements, I really wanted to know what the twists would be. The twists were okay, I was surprised by one or two things, but ultimately this wasn't mind-blowing.

I wish this author the best of luck and I hope I don't deter people from reading this with my honest opinion, but the writing was not for me...at all. I think this story had so much potential, but I just didn't enjoy it in the end.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martins Press, and Macmillan audio for the ARCs and ALC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This publishes on 2/6/24.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for allowing me the opportunity to listen to this thriller. I was excited to get the chance to listen to this based on the title alone! The book was definitely not what I would consider a thriller though and about 3/4 of the way through this book I got totally lost. I had a hard time keeping up with where the story was whether it was past or present and then voila they wrapped up the ending in a pretty little bow.

I loved this thriller! Charlie had a traumatic experience in Graduate school that still haunts her so much that her brain doesn't remember anything that happened on the night that changed everything. One of my favorite concepts of this book is that we slowly find out what happened at the same time at the FMC but we are still getting flash backs to her past to learn the context. We are trying to figure out who to trust, just like Charlie.
This entire book was well written, had great characters, was fast pace, and left me wanting more from the story. This will scratch anyone's thriller itch perfectly.

The narrator, Marisa Calin, was fantastic! She was perfect for this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillian Audio, and Jenny Hollarder for an audio-arc!

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead is the debut thriller from Jenny Hollander. The book follows Charlie, a magazine editor who suffered a severe trauma in her college years that has followed her into adulthood. With a new movie set to release about the tragedy known as ‘Scarlet Christmas’, Charlie scrambles to keep her name and face out of the press before she has to reveal the secret she has kept about that fateful day.
I usually am not a fan of books where the main character holds onto this terrible secret that doesn’t turn out to be that bad. This book definitely employs this – Charlie’s insane guilt and secret-keeping is over the fact that she (maybe) killed someone in self-defense - but the point that it makes about trauma makes this iteration work. Unlike similar books in the genre, this book instead focuses on the trauma of people’s experiences and how important it is to work on and move past them. There is a lot of emotional depth in this book that isn’t always present in thrillers, and I appreciated this change in tone from the expected formula.
If you need books that move quickly with lots of plot twists, this isn’t the thriller for you. It has a much more mature, slow-burn tone to it that definitely won’t be for everyone. I will admit that, even though I enjoyed the book as a whole very much, I found some of the middle chapters about Charlie’s relationship with her fiancé and her friends a little tedious. I also felt that the reveal of the actually killer came a little out of left field. The “signs” of mental illness discussed earlier in the book are only revealed after the incidence, and Charlie isn’t really privy to them – meaning, neither are we. That said, the reveal of the actual killer on Scarlet Christmas doesn’t feel as important as the emotional journey that Charlie takes to come to terms with the events of that night.
This book won’t be for everyone, but those that like their thriller a little more slow-moving with greater emotional development for the characters will like this one.

Suspenseful novel that keeps you guessing!

A successful New York editor, Charlie, is engaged to a mega-wealthy business owner. Even though it looks like Charlie is living the perfect life, she is fighting to hide a secret about being involved in the “Scarlet Christmas”, a massacre at her college that took the lives of several of her close friends. As a movie is going to be produced about the massacre, Charlie is afraid of someone uncovering new evidence that will ruin her life.

The author doesn’t inform you what happens immediately, but through flashbacks, she gives you tiny bits of information to keep you guessing what happened that tragic night and why.

Thank you for the advanced reader copy Net Galley and Macmillan Audio. #NetGalley #MacmillanAudio @MacmillanAudio

The title of this first book by Jenny Hollander caught my attention immediately. I read this via audiobook and found it to be a pleasant read and experience. As a professional counselor, I thought the way she handled the therapy part of the story really well.

The flow of the story went really well and I enjoyed the surprises!

This book was very slow, paced, and it took a while to even hear about the horrific night in question. The twist fell flat for me. The ending was a little bit of a surprise, but still lacking. I will try another book by this author because I see a lot of potential. Thank you to NetGalley and McMillan For an advanced copy of this book.

Okay, I liked the book enough. However, I feel it could have been shorter, it was repetitive in parts and it felt a little chaotic. I really wanted to love it and I liked the story and the then and now...I just felt like it took to longer to get through then it should. That being said, people should try it, it may be someone else's cup of tea. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance audio copy.

I am sad to say I DNF’’d this about the 35% mark. I do like a book that has two timelines, but the jumping back-and-forth between the two timelines in the middle of a particular scene really threw me off. I really didn’t enjoy the writing or listening to the audio

I enjoyed this book, but I was really wanting a big twist at the end. I like the happy ending for the main character. The narrator was solid.

My thanks to Net Galley and MacMillan Audio for allowing me to review this audio book.

This book really missed the mark
I could not get beyond 30% listened to. I tried to not pay attention to the other negative reviews, but they were spot on. Narrator was good but just rambling on and cramming so much content and characters it was really hard to follow on. Wished I had Scarlet Christmas established more. Can't recommend.

I really liked the premise, it had everything I should enjoy, but the beginning was slow and the ending did not pull it all together for me.

This was my first ever audiobook, and I wasn't sure about it in the beginning, but as I kept listening I grew more and more intrigued by the story.

Charlie's character was strange but in a mysteriously appealing way; like I couldn't help but like her even though at times I thought she was a horrible person! I thought the characters were well written and the storyline was really interesting. For the longest time, I thought Charlie had killed Kate and Jordan because she was the one who had a psychotic episode. When I found out it wasn't her, I couldn't help but feel even more compelled to finish the book.

I enjoyed this book and the twists and turns it contains. I think what threw me off is just the fact that I wasn't reading the story on paper myself, but otherwise it was a great book!