Synopsis from Goodreads:
A supernatural thriller in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts about two young girls, a scary story that becomes far too real, and the tragic–and terrifying–consequences that follow one of them into adulthood.
Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face…
In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real–and she could prove it.
That belief got Becca killed.
It’s been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night–that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She’s done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn’t seen since the night Becca died.
The night Heather killed her.
Now, someone else knows what she did…and they’re determined to make Heather pay.
I received a copy of this title via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.
The Dead Girls Club will be available December 10, 2019.
To be perfectly honest, I wanted to read this book because of that beautiful cover. I think I requested a copy on NetGalley without even really reading the synopsis. Unfortunately, the cover ended up being the best thing about the book.
I kind of feel like the synopsis is a little misleading. It doesn’t say anything inaccurate, but I think it frames the story as more of a Horror than it actually was. Instead of a creepy, cat-and-mouse type of story, we get to watch a paranoid woman wander around making stupid decision after stupid decision, interspersed with the re-telling of the events that led to her childhood best friend’s death. The past chapters were a bit of a struggle to get through. The Red Lady is a story Becca makes up and scares her friends with. Many of the chapters were just repetitive stories of the Red Lady and how Heather gets annoyed that Becca doesn’t want to talk about anything else. Eventually all the girls start to think she’s real and it ends in some insanity. The girls are 12 or 13 and I felt like they were too old for this type of behavior. I also thought Becca was a little psycho and I had a hard time understanding why Heather would actually want to be friends with her.
I had a real hard time liking Heather. I just feel like every single thing she did was the wrong thing. As a psychologist I thought she should have recognized her unhealthy behavior a little more than she did. But, I guess it goes along with the cliche that the people who need psychologists the most are the ones that end up going into that field. She also really frustrated me with how she treated her husband and her friends.
One good thing I have to say about the story, though, is that I thought the conclusion was going to be super obvious and it ended up not being what I thought it would be. I was so focused on what I thought was going to happen, that I overlooked all the clues the author left and I liked that it surprised me. I just wish the rest of the story wasn’t so repetitive and slow.
Overall, The Dead Girls Club wasn’t really for me. I found the main character really unlikable and felt the story dragged a lot. It didn’t live up to it’s potential for me, but I have seen some more favorable reviews of it, so it might still be worth the read for some. I’m increasing my rating a bit because the end did manage to have a twist I wasn’t expecting.
Overall Rating (out of 5): 2.5 Stars
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