i fear i am not liking this as much as i anticipated 🫣 as much as i really wanted to hop on the rory powers train after seeing how wilder girls blew up, i was excited to give this a shot but it’s not keeping my interest and 46% through, i am deciding to dnf

YESSS dark vicious delusional girls! So so good - though Nan tells us she's the killer, there's still so much to unravel and it was so riveting. I love stories of murderous girls and this one killed it.

Kill Creatures follows Nan a year after her friends disappeared. Nan has always repeated the same thing. They went out for a final swim last summer. Her friends went ahead and never came back. A year later, Luce returns. Nan is floored. Because it’s impossible for Luce to return. She killed Luce last year along with Edie and Jane.

This was such a unique story. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a mystery/thriller where we know the killer from the start, and it’s the mc. This was such a twisty tale with plot twists I wasn’t expecting. It’s super fast paced and the setting feels so vividly alive. It’s the perfect book to read during the summer.

Nan is a fascinating main character. Spending time in her head was so interesting, especially with how she justified things and moved through the world and the friendships. Super fascinating. I loved the ending and the reveal for what really happened to Luce and that fateful summer night. Really great take on friendship and jealousy and revenge.

I’d definitely recommend you check this out if you like mystery/thrillers set during summer with a unique and gripping take.

Thank you to Penguin Teen CA and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

*Also, OMG the cover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm in love and obsessed. So stunning!!!!!

I received a free eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I loved Wilder Girls, but I had strongly mixed feelings about Burn our Bodies Down (all vibes and no plot), so I wasn’t sure which way this was going to lean. Interestingly, Power starts with an author’s note that basically explains that this is meant to be a much more straightforward book - everything will have a real-world explanation (this is the gist, to be clear, not the exact phrasing). It’s an interesting tactic - I know I’ve occasionally spent a whole book wondering when the monsters are going to show up, only to find out that there’s nothing supernatural going on.

Anyway! Our main character is Nan. Last summer, her three best friends disappeared. Now it’s one year later, and the town is holding a vigil to say goodbye. Except on the eve of said vigil, one of the missing girls comes back. This is a bit of a complicating factor for Nan, seeing as she definitely killed all 3 of them. This isn’t treated as a spoiler - Powers mentions it in the author’s note, it’s part of the blurb, and Nan herself tells us in the first few pages. Again, it’s a smart strategy - we aren’t really dealing with a whodunnit. Nan…dunnit. The mystery is more where Luce was, how she came back, and how much she actually remembers. And also why Nan did what she did, especially since she’s very clear that she doesn’t feel any remorse about it. She’s also very straightforward about HOW she did it - smacked Luce in the head with a rock and let Edie and Jane drown in a dangerous rip current. Apparently Luce wasn’t all the way dead.

The narrative moves back and forth in time between the present day and the previous summer, getting ever closer to the day of that fateful final boat ride. We see Nan get pulled into the investigation by a *new* detective, who seems interested in interrogating Nan’s story in a way the previous guy was not (Nan told the cops that all 4 of them went out in the boat together, but she stayed behind to make sure it didn’t drift away while the other 3 went swimming. They just…never came back). We eventually learn the truth of what really went down that night, and although it is indeed grounded in the real world, it’s not quite as straightforward as you might think.

I mostly enjoyed this - I had a hard time putting it down, and I kept getting excited to pick it back up. And although I probably would have also enjoyed reading the whole thing from the detective’s perspective instead, I didn’t mind Nan as a narrator (and I think she’s an interesting character). The quibbles I had with it would give too much away, so I’ll have to save those for June!

Actual rating 4.25 stars

Messy. Toxic. Dark.

Nan is grappling with guilt and confusion after her three best friends vanished a year ago. At their one-year memorial, Luce, one of the missing girls, suddenly returns, which is weird, because Nan is pretty sure she killed them. Like, intentionally.

The way my jaw was on the FLOOR constantly. Nan’s unreliable narration keeps you guessing—is she losing her mind, or did Luce somehow survive the blow to the head? If so, where has she been for an entire year?

The toxic friendships, raw emotions, and shocking twists make this an intense ride. While more of Luce’s perspective could’ve added depth, the gut-punch of an ending will send you reeling, making it up to us, the reader. If you’re a fan of messy characters and psychological thrillers, add this one to your TBR.

Read this pretty much all in one sitting if being at my job and reading during quiet moments at my shift and finishing it all in one day counts as one sitting. This was really fun and utterly engrossing. I was fully invested and figuring out what on earth happened. I love mean girls, I love queer girls, and I love revenge, so this ticked all of those boxes for me. Points off are just for the fact that there could have been so much commentary on classism built into this that was not quite taken in the direction it could have gone to make it more compelling. And I wish there was more diversity within the girls since that also could have been an interesting dynamic. But in some ways, I am reviewing a book that doesn’t exist. I did like the small tourist town hell of it all, and for what it is, this is really enjoyable, and I had a great time with it.

I read and loved Wilder Girls a few years ago, so I was excited to read this one. Unfortunately, this was a predictable story that left me wanting more. I think a deeper look into the main character's forced amnesia/mental health would have been one way to better captivate the audience. It definitely held my attention though, so there's reason to believe others will love this book.

Not quite sure what I think about this book or how to review it. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it was short and twisty enough that I'm not mad I read the book even though I just didn't really care that much about it.

This was exactly what I expect from Rory Power, and by that I mean I had no idea what to expect but I couldn’t put it down.

THIS IS SO WEIRD AND CREEPY AND CHILLING. I was unsettled. I feel like I can smell the canyon. I’m spooked. I’m gagged. The ending was so incredibly satisfying. Nan was such a well done and horrifying MC. The friendship between the girls was depicted so well. All of this is just immaculate. 10/10.

Urgh. I really liked 'Wilder Girls' and liked Power's second book, but this one was just an incoherent mess by the end. I barreled through the book in under three hours, so the writing was plenty immersive, but I kept thinking that the book would gel and make *sense*. Sadly, I was wrong, and the twists/reveals toward the end were either not twists, predictable, or wildly self-contradictory. I'm all for a zany thriller (please!) but this one just felt like a stutter-stop narrative where glaring gaps in logic just get broader the more you look at it.

4.5 stars. Finished in one sitting. I loved this twisty tale that’s just as much a thriller as it is dark commentary on teenage girl dynamics. There’s no better summary than this line: “The girls are dead. After all I should know, because I’m the one that killed them.”

Thank you to Net Galley for a free ebook in exchange for this honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children's - Delacorte Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

It's been a year since Nan's three best friends went swimming and never returned and were presumed dead. However, Luce returns on the anniversary shocking Nan since she killed all three of them. A few twists.

Although it was hard to get into at the start, the double layer of the deaths and the reappearance made it an enjoyable book.

This book was a quick read, and kept me wondering what was going on throughout the whole text. Rory Power writes an twisting tale of "friendship" and murder through the eyes of Nan, the unreliable narrator. Nan's friends are murdered, and one of them comes back from the dead, threatening Nan's biggest secret.

This is a good read, and if you like books with twists that'll keep you guessing.

gripping and twisty if a bit predictable in some of its twists at points. a very interesting premise to start with , though. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.

Rory Power’s Kill Creatures is a solid mystery novel with an eerie atmosphere and a fun whodunit plot. The story keeps you engaged as the characters piece together the truth. While the mystery itself is enjoyable to unravel, it does rely on some familiar tropes, though. It felt predictable at time, which took away some of the suspense, but the overall pacing kept things moving. Power’s writing style is immersive, creating a moody and unsettling tone that fits the story well.

One aspect that didn’t fully work for me was the friendship between the main characters. Their dynamic felt a bit forced, and it took me a while to understand them. It did all end up making sense eventually, however. Another thing that struck me as odd was the protagonist’s memory loss—while it serves as a key plot device, it sometimes felt a little too convenient and I didn't understand how she even lost the memory of it all, tbh.

That said, Kill Creatures is an entertaining read. It's a guilty-pleasure read, and a good choice for fans of small-town mysteries with eerie undertones. It just may not leave a lasting impression.

I loved this book. Rory Power is a gifted writer that manages to write a spellbinding story of friendship and betrayal that keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

Yes, this is a murder mystery. Yes, you are told who the victims and even the killer is (it’s right there on the back of the book). No, you don’t know what’s happening.

Rory Power is good at flipping the typical into something… else. Wilder Girls could have been another girl’s school thriller; it was a sister of Annihilation. Burn Our Bodies Down could have been a family trauma story, but it becomes something about the dark things underneath, in metaphor & not. Here, we have multiple revenge stories, layered & folded into each other. The victims and killers alike are sympathetic and despicable. Even tertiary characters are touched by a very human darkness, even if it’s just everyday corruption.

The story is definitely engaging. The character development is alright but not the best in my opinion. I wasn't as in love with this story as I've been with Power's other stories. It's still well worth the read.

This was a mix of creepy and mysterious. At one point I thought I had it figured out, but the shift between past and the present threw me off again. Of course when the events finally unfold, the epilogue twists the story again! I liked the story from Nan’s perspective because her limited knowledge of her dad meant the reader didn't have any details either. This book is a well-written mix of creepy, murder, and the result of what jealousy can make people do.