Not sure why I never shared a review of this book!
It's been so long since I read this book, but I can still remember it so it was definitely a great read! Great concept and I loved how I was constantly going back and forth about who I suspected of killing Rachel. Ending left me shocked! Jaycee was a great main character, well developed and I liked her determination.

I'm such a sucker for Veronica Mars and pulpy mysteries that I really thought "Dead Girls Don't Lie" would be up my alley.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. I felt like the story – which revolves around the death of a teenaged girl in a very religious small town with a large migrant worker population – heavily leaned on tired stereotypes and that the mystery of whodunnit was too easy to figure out despite the fact that many of the "clues" throughout didn't always add up.

All in all, I'm sorry to say that this was a disappointing read.

It has been 8 years since I requested this title and I still haven't read it. I am still interested in the book and have since purchased a copy for my shelf but I don't know when I will get to this at this point, if ever. I appreciate the approval for this title and if/when I do decide to read I will leave a review on instagram, goodreads, storygraph, and amazon. thanks again for the approval.

The premise of this book sounds so good, but the execution falls flat. There are too many predictable things, too many caricatured characters. I wanted to like it, but ended up not buying it at all.

If you love mysteries, and are looking for something with a great plot twist, we recommend Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf.
It's not a new book, it's been out since 2013, but it is definitely one we would call a "hidden gem."

The plot goes like this: Jaycee had a best friend named Rachel. They grew up together in a really small town, and were pretty much inseparable until Rachel (who is half Mexican in a town where being Mexican is NOT considered a good thing to be) started hanging out with some local gang members and changing basically everything about herself and keeping secrets from Jaycee. Then something horrible happens: Rachel is shot dead, in what SEEMS to be a gang-related drive-by shooting. This is the second gang-related death of a teenager in the small town - the first was a teenage boy who had been hanging out with Rachel and her gang friends.
Then Jaycee gets a text - from Rachel. The text basically lets Jaycee known that Rachel's death is not what it seems to be, and that a lot of people in town are keeping some really dark secrets, including Rachel and Jaycee's mutual crush and his two brothers (one of whom is a Sheriff). Rachel's message tells Jaycee the only person who can be trusted is a guy named Eduardo, a known gang member with a rap sheet. Jaycee knows she needs to figure out what really happened to her BFF, but she is not only dealing with her first real relationship, but she's hiding some secrets herself - and if they get out her life could be in danger too.

This book is definitely a mystery with a lot of twists and turns. It kept me guessing until almost the very end, and then the twist ending was totally unexpected.