Name: Undead Girl Gang
ISBN: 9780451478252

Lily Anderson

"A fun, fast read...it will resonate with readers who dabble in any sort of arts, dark or otherwise." --NPR.org "With a singular and hilariously cutting teen voice, UNDEAD GIRL GANG is sure to be one of the most talked-about YA novels of the year." --BookPage Veronica Mars meets The Craft when a teen girl investigates the suspicious deaths of three classmates and accidentally ends up bringing them back to life to form a hilariously unlikely--and unwilling--vigilante girl gang. Meet teenage Wiccan Mila Flores, who truly could not care less what you think about her Doc Martens, her attitude, or her weight because she knows that, no matter what, her BFF Riley is right by her side. So when Riley and Fairmont Academy mean girls June Phelan-Park and Dayton Nesseth die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone's explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life. Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders. But they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer...before the killer strikes again.

Undead Girl Gang

Sally Salinas

3.5* predictable, but I enjoyed the story & characters.

Incredibly fun from start to finish. Very Heathers meets Hocus Pocus and I had a blast. There were a few things plot wise I wanted to be stronger especially when it came to the plot twist but I respect and enjoyed this spooky fun time. Finished in a day could not put it down!!

Alexa Jade

Elisa Bieg

I stepped a little out of my comfort zone here, because this is basically a YA contemporary novel, albeit with a touch of magical realism.
My rating reflects that, so this is probably ever so slightly less compared to my fantasy reads, but definitely much better than I expected.

This is a really fun read; even more fun as audiobook, as the narrator is fantastic at interpreting the various characters, particularly the protagonist and her undead sidekicks.

Realistic despite the urban fantasy themes; teens are well-portrayed, language doesn’t try to be unrealistically clean, emotions and reactions super relatable.

Also quite unpredictable, which is always a plus in any novel featuring a mystery.

Sabetha Danes

Undead Girl Gang lived up to it's cover and blurb (which is what drew me in). It was a true to genre YA read, many YAs that I read tend to lean very close to New Adult. But this book stays within the YA age range perfectly. The characters were very stereotypical high school characters but did fulfill that theme fully. This was a slight disappointment as the stereotypical high school story is played out for me. Overall, it was a good story, and wrapped up well. It took me longer to read due to a few spots that were slow.

Alexa Auerbach 

This was a really cute book and quick read. I throughly enjoyed it.

I’m stuck between wanting to give this a 4 or 4.5.

Very cute & very fun! Loved all of the body positivity & humor that was sprinkled throughout the book. The friendship & character growth was super heartwarming! I did think the ending was a little predictable - which didn’t really matter because the journey there was so fun to read. I also found the main character’s stubbornness & attitude to be a little frustrating at times & some of the random pop culture references made me cringe. Overall though, I enjoyed reading it and was very sad when the seven days came to an end!

Alli

Erin Russell

3.33/5 stars. This was a fun quick read that hit just the spot for the mood I’ve been in lately.It was Buffy the vampire slayer-esque and spooky and I loved it.

Vera Sokolyanskaya

This book didn't know what it wanted to be when it grows up so it was trying different things.

It tried to be a mystery novel so there was murder but there was really no investigation and the killer was caught as a result of a coincidence. 
It tried to be a witch craft novel but there was minimal world building and no background on how magic works, etc. And maybe I missed it but there was no explanation where the red grimoire with black dark magic came from (other than it was couriered to the character's house one day - how convenient!).
It also tried to be a zombie novel just a tiny bit.
It also tried to explore body positivity since the main character is on the larger side. But other than Mila being called names and thinking that stairs/chairs/other objects creak under her, the topic wasn't explored.

And in the end this book failed at being all of those things. 
Next.

Grace O'Callaghan

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year and I absolutely loved it. 
Mila Flores is a badass fat girl who wears an armour of Doc Martens and denim jackets who also happens to be a witch along with her best friend Riley. However, Mila is heartbroken when Riley and two of the school’s mean girls seemingly kill themselves. But Mila is suspicious and thinks it’s murder. So what do you do when you’re best friend is murdered? Bring her and the two girls back to life as zombies and try to find out who the killer is before the spell wears off.

As I said this was such a delightful read. Full of magic and mystery it has an amazing atmosphere and aesthetic. Really loved reading about all the spells they did and all things witchy. There was also a motorcycle coven which is everything to be honest. Anderson’s writing was also the right amount of dry wit and seriousness for Mila’s character.

Now let’s talk about Mila. I absolutely adored her. There were so many layers to her. She puts up this wall that basically tells you to F off, but underneath that she’s really quite lonely and is grieving so much for her best friend. She was also so loyal and dedicated to solving the mystery.

The undead girls were also really great. It was nice to see how dying changed the girls, particularly June and Dayton. Obviously they were only brought back for a week, but they grew so much. Not so much that they were completely different people, but enough that they realised the damage they had caused to Mila and Riley in life.

I think the plot is what made this book a four star instead a five star for me. I loved the first third and really enjoyed the last third, but the middle was a little slow. I kind of understand why it was like that, but there wasn’t much to sink my teeth into then. While this was a mystery it was also a little predictable to me so I wouldn’t recommend it for that aspect.

Overall a really solid witchy read with amazing characters, but a bit of a predictable storyline. Would highly recommend for the witchy and zombie elements. I think it also highlighted that people grieve in different ways. If you are reading this for this mystery, it’s pretty straightforward.

Jessica Williamson

4.75 Stars

Firstly, let me say I finished this thing at midnight. Talk about using the witching hour properly.

Characters: All of the characters, but especially Mila, felt REAL. They felt like real people we could meet in any random graveyard in America. They were diverse, fun to read, and just plain wonderful. I fund so much of teenage me in Mila.

I absolutely adored Anderson's writing style. The humor, the snark. This book had me from the first sentence. "The problem with your best friend dying is there's no one to sit with you at funerals." I mean, how could you not just fall in love from the beginning? I will be doing research once I'm finished with this review and looking up any and all of Anderson's previous work because this just blew my mind. 

This book not only has magic and mean girls, but also a murder mystery. The depth this goes into Wicca shows that this author either A) is a user of magic or B) did some damn fine research. There's so much depth and heart to this story, I just can't say enough good things about it. 

I jokingly guessed who the killer was about half-way through because you know, it would have been funny. BUT IT WASN'T FUNNY!!! It was creepy as hell. This book was not sold as horror but by the Goddess it got pretty darn horrific toward the end and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Šárka Vomelová

Yanelle Ruby

Ruth Parker 

This book should have been awesome. Should an amazing and original premise shouldn’t have been so boring and slow. I think perhaps this book has been overhyped for me and I was expecting so much more. I didn’t hate this book but it was one of the most disappointing reads of the year.

Mollee Clingenpeel

Jayarna La Bozzetta

I feel kind of sad to have to give this a three. There was some really good parts, it's well written, and I enjoyed all the witch parts. But there's nothing special about it. It felt so very contemporary YA without any hint of different. and I'm not sure why, because the plot is pretty unique. I'm shocked she somehow managed to make this feel like just another school day novel. 

I loved the female friendship in this one though. I would reccomend giving it a read, but I wish it was a lot more life changing.

celeste

This book was one of my most anticipated new releases of the year and it ended up being so disappointing, I don't have words to express the look on my face when I finished the book and thought that's it? really? Well, talk about an underwhelming ending to an overall underwhelming book.

I honestly don't understand what happened, I mean, what's there not to like about the plotline of this book? you got witches, mexican rep, girl gangs and a murder mystery. And yet, this was such a forgettable book.

Besides a few sassy lines sprinkled here and there throughout the book, the rest of it was just plain boring. And it got worse knowing that what was driving this book was the mystery intrigue as to who the murderer was, and not even THAT was a plot-twist or completely unexpected when the revelation happened. Having guessed as to who the culprit was was kinda the last nail in the coffin for me. It was disappointing, the characters felt one dimensional without a proper and natural development, they just happened to do a 180 in a manner of days, and it just didn't feel organic and natural to me. All in all, I don't think this was my cup of tea at all, which is weird because I was honestly expecting this book since I first read what it was gonna be about. I don't know what happened, but to me, this was just a very average book with forgettable characters.

Anastaciya

2.5 
it was okay, but didn't make me all excited... guessed part of the plot. liked the ending.

Rebeca 

4.5 stars 

Awww this was actually SO GOOD. I'm so glad I finally read it. It was just what I needed to get out of my reading slump. The humor in this was fantastic and listening to this on audio was perfect! The narrator was awesome!

Leelynn Brady

Thank you so much to Brittany @ Brittany the Book Guru for buddy reading this with me! We blew through this so quickly, and this was such a great break from all the adult fantasy I’ve been trying to read. So, thank you to her for being an amazing reading partner and all around friend.

Read the rest of my review on my blog Sometimes Leelynn Reads

Zoe Smolen

This is definitely a fun book, but I also didn't love it as much I as I wanted to. The story has depths, shows true friendship, and even has a nice plot twist. However, I didn't find myself super invested in the story. That being said, I do think I would have loved this book when I was a teen myself! 

Thanks to Penguin for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Amanda Furlan

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. It was a lot of fun and I didn't see it coming which is rare with a YA mystery.

Becca Futrell

TW: Suicide

I honestly struggled with what to rate this book, so I'm just going to go with a 3.5 & then break it down & see if I can come up with a good enough reason as to why. 

AESTHETIC: Let's start off with the gorgeous cover??!@!! When I first seen this book, I knew I had to read it. Yeah, yeah -- a case of judging a book by its cover. I loved the enamel pins on the denim & the title??!@! YES PLEASE. Give me all of the girl gangs, k thanks. Also, this story involves wicca? Bonus points! 

CHARACTERS & RELATIONSHIPS: Okay, so I'm gonna be honest.. I did not care for the main character, Mila, in the beginning. In fact, I didn't care for anything at first. But Mila was just an irk in my nerve for a while, until she finally grew on me. & damn it, Caleb's character was so disgusting to me? His thoughts on the girls' suicides & his in-depth visuals on what it probably looked like truly disgusted me & I almost put this book down due to triggers. Dayton (one of the undead 'mean girls') honestly ended up being my favorite. All of the characters developed & changed throughout the course of the story & unlikely friendships are made that had me practically in tears by the end. I would do anything for this undead girl gang, tbh. 

REPRESENTATION: djklasjdklasj a FAT CHARACTER?!! I'm so glad to see more rep lately when it comes to this! Mila calls herself fat multiple times, but that doesn't define her at all & I absolutely love it. There's so much more to this character than the fact that she's fat; she's a badass witch that just raised the dead (... although that's not always a good thing). But for those who identify as a fat girl, this book and character is definitely relatable. Also, I can't relate -- but there is Latinx rep and that's amazing! 

PLOT POINTS & TWISTS: I felt that this book flowed together really well; sometimes when reading books, especially paranormal-esque books, I question how we got from one point to another, but Undead Girl Gang scenes worked well together. I, personally, was shocked at the plot twist, but I also suck at whodunnits -- so that might just be a me thing. 

OTHER: Some of the humor was a lil' off & at times, awkward. I feel like even after finishing the book, there were some characters who reacted to certain situations in a way that still doesn't make sense? Mostly referring to Riley's attitude towards Mila after she returns from the dead, but hey, maybe I missed something there too. 

In general, this was a fun read; it wasn't a perfect five-stars, but it was enjoyable & had a unique and fun plot.

For more reviews, check out my blog here!