Kathryn Foxfield

Welcome to the most gripping thriller of the year: hugely entertaining, high-octane and read-in-a-single-sitting. Mind games. Murder. Mayhem. How far would you go to survive the night? Blackmail lures sixteen-year-old Ava to the derelict carnival on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world and from their morals. As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she's willing to go to survive. For fans of Karen McManus' One of Us is Lying, Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and films like I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Good Girls Die First

🌸 Crybaby 🌸

Just because something isn't real, it doesn't mean it can't hurt us," Esme said. “As long as someone believes

Love is nothing but a chemical trick, yet it's still the root of all evil in this world

She wanted to capture the ghosts of capitalism and disinvestment that still lingered on the pier 

Erin Mackenzie 

I liked this a lot, found it quite confusing in some parts but it was overall quite interesting

Do you wish there was more Eldritch god horror in the world. Great! This novel will scratch that itch. I read this one several months ago when I was a on vacation.  

A bunch of kids who aren't exactly friends are trapped together and facing their inner demons. It's not fun to show our darker selves to people we trust. The only small nitpick I have is that it is a good plot, no question, but I would have liked better developed characters so that I could care about them more. I would still read this again.

Claire

Do you wish there was more Eldritch god horror in the world. Great! This novel will scratch that itch. I read this one several months ago when I was a on vacation.  

A bunch of kids who aren't exactly friends are trapped together and facing their inner demons. It's not fun to show our darker selves to people we trust. The only small nitpick I have is that it is a good plot, no question, but I would have liked better developed characters so that I could care about them more. I would still read this again.

“I don’t want to be anyone’s puppet. The moment I let someone make my choices for me, that’s when I know I’ve lost.”

“I kind of think regret and guilt aren’t such terrible things. Not if they make us into better people.”

Good Girls Die First followed ten teenagers who had been lured to an abandoned carnival. All ten characters are different and unique in their own ways but all are keeping a secret.

This book had me on the edge of my seat waiting anxiously for what was going to happen next, which is exactly what you want when it comes to books like this.

Usually when it comes to books like these I can find the characters don’t have much individuality but I was so happy to see that it wasn’t the case with this book.

I found myself not being able to trust any of these characters or find any of them reliable. I believe that’s also something you want when it comes to books like these.

I would definitely revisit this book again in the future.

Kirsty

I hated this book. I had so many issues with it that I don’t even know where to begin. The characters; they were all such awful people. I couldn’t find any redeeming quality in any of them and it got to the point where I really didn’t care who was going to die next. Their stupidity was unbelievable and the dialogue of each of them was so forced and cringey. It was like a 50-year-old was writing how they think teenagers talked and oh boy was it bad. I also feel like the author wanted to include all of these characters but only fleshed out half of them so I found myself getting the others mixed up and they just blurred into one.
I don’t know whether it was because I lost interest pretty quickly or what but I feel like the author was trying to do way too much and something that should have been focussed on more was setting the scene. I really struggled to visualise the setting that they were in. 
In a thriller I LOVE to be shocked and I never usually see what’s coming but every reveal was so predictable that I saw it coming from a mile away and it just felt like I was reading words on a page instead of being sucked into the story. Overall, this 300 page book was way too long and dragged so much. I’m sure it has it’s audience but unfortunately, that’s not me.

I really enjoyed reading but the end was a bit destroying the story... 

Beth Bartholomew

Thank you very much to Scholastic for sending me through an early release of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Let's start off by saying this book was so different from what I was expecting and I don't even know. I thought this book would really steer down the YA thriller route, but it surprised me and was much more horror-based than I expected with a bit of fantasy too. It sort of reminded me of Other Words for Smoke in terms of the villain and the way the fantasy collided with real life in a creepy way.

This book is about ten teens who are all anonymously invited to a burnt down, ruin of a carnival with the question 'can you keep a secret?'. They are all very different and don't really know why they're there, but they all seem to be hiding their own secret. Gradually over the course of days, the mystery unfolds and the horror of the plot sets in. That's all I'll say about the plot. And honestly, I don't really know what I was thinking for half of this book. It managed to scare me within the first 50 pages, which I was reading near to midnight and refused to leave my room to pee for fear of god knows what hiding in the shadows.

After the initial creepy moment, I found I wasn't quite as surprised by this book and felt it kind of spelt out the plot for me from this point onwards. So I think I lost the intrigue element a little, the more I read. But I was interested in seeing how the characters unwove as the writing explored them more in the situation of trauma. I have to say though, I didn't really like any of the characters, they were all incredibly flawed, but I don't mean that in a bad way. This book has a dark atmosphere and I feel like the characters have dark souls to match. 

I enjoyed that this book was set in the UK (I'm fairly sure?), which I quite liked. I always like reading a book set in the same area as me because I feel we don't get enough big YA thriller books set in the UK. The setting itself though is definitely suited to the horror genre, it is dark, run-down and somewhere easy to get lost. It fits perfectly in the nightmare setting, which makes it an interesting setting to read about. 

My reason for giving this book a three-star review is that it was missing something, something I can't put my finger on. I felt like I was pulled in but then the plot wasn't varied enough to keep me hooked. The setting didn't change so we felt isolated, and I certainly thought that Foxfield writes this feeling well. But for me, there were almost too many different storylines going on at once to really feel gripped and intrigued as the book progressed. Overall though, I did enjoy this book and would recommend it to fans of thrillers with a slight fantasy/different turn.

Katherine

Csenge 

Leah Preston

Eve Roddis

Sorcha Kelly

Kate O'Brien

Leah 

Scarlett 

Cadrian Mayfield

For fans of Karen McManus' One of Us is Lyingand films like I Know What You Did Last Summer, comes a gripping thriller about murder, mystery, and deception. Blackmail lures Ava to the abandoned amusement park on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world. As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she's willing to go to survive. The teenagers have only their secrets to protect and each other to betray. Perfect for: 13-18 year-old mystery fans Fans of Karen McManus and Stephen King

Good Girls Die First

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