This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I really enjoyed this story. I found that this book grabbed my interest right from the start and was a rather solid read until the very end. I found that I wanted the best for these three women and hoped that the choices that they were making would work out for them. I wondered what I would do if I were thrust into the same situation that they were presented with and still haven't decided on an answer. 

Jesse, Claire, and Gabriela have been best friends for years and have always celebrated their birthdays together. The celebration for their fortieth birthday was one of the more memorable parties since it ended with Jesse going into labor with her son, Lucas. Fast forward ten years and the trio is celebrating their fiftieth in Las Vegas where they are given the chance to go back and relive the year they turned forty. 

I loved the concept behind this story. Who doesn't have things in their past that they would love to go back and change? I know I could compile a rather long list of things I wish I had done differently without a problem. These three ladies all of have major things that they want to change. Jesse wants to save her marriage, which fell apart after the birth of her son. Gabriela wants to have a baby. Claire wants to save her mother who died from cancer that year. The changes that they are making create such an impact that other unexpected changes start occurring and they have no idea how to handle everything.

I liked these three characters. They were all flawed and made some pretty big mistakes in their lives. I found Jesse and Claire to be my favorites of the group. Gabriela was so focused on her single goal of having a baby that she pushed everything else aside. Jesse wasn't able to change the biggest obstacle to saving her marriage but she could change how she handled things. I wasn't always happy with the choices she was making but I understood why she made them. Claire had a lot to deal with and I understood her desperation to save her mother and improve her relationship with her daughter. 

This was my first experience listening to Lisa Larsen's narration but I think she was a great choice for this story. She was able to capture these three characters along with all of the emotions that they were experiencing. I found her voice to be very pleasant and I had no problems listening to her for hours at a time.

I would recommend this book to others. I thought that this was a thought-provoking story of three friends trying to repair some of the mistakes in their lives. There were no easy fixes in this story and all of the changes they accomplished took a lot of hard work. I wouldn't hesitate to read more from this talented writing pair in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Atria Books via NetGalley and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library via Hoopla. 

Initial Thoughts
I really enjoyed this story. This book takes a look at three friends who get the opportunity at age 50 to go back 10 years and try to do things differently. It was a rather interesting plot that made me wonder if I would have made the same decision in their place. Of course, there are things in my life I wish I could change but if I did where would I be right now? Their 40th year was memorable, to say the least, and it was interesting to see how many things changed often unexpectedly. I thought that the narrator did a great job with the story and added to my overall enjoyment of the book.

A special thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For estranged friends Ashley, Natalie, and Lauren, it’s time to heal the old wounds between them. Where better to repair those severed ties than on a girls’ getaway to the beautiful paradise of Tulum, Mexico? But even after they’re reunited, no one is being completely honest about the past or the secrets they’re hiding. When Ashley disappears on their girls’ night out, Natalie and Lauren have to try to piece together their hazy memories to figure out what could have happened to her, while also reconciling their feelings of guilt over their last moments together.

Was Ashley with the man she’d met only days before? Did she pack up and leave? Was she kidnapped? Or worse—could Natalie or Lauren have snapped under the weight of her own lies?

As the clock ticks, hour by hour, Natalie and Lauren’s search rushes headlong into growing suspicion and dread. Maybe their secrets run deeper and more dangerous than one of them is willing—or too afraid—to admit.

Liz and Lisa, what a ride!  This book was fantastic!  The writing is layered, dynamic, and oh so clever.  The character depictions are detailed and fierce and I was completely captivated by the timelines and narratives.    

What Fenton and Steinke do best is conversation.  Did you not feel like you were on this trip too?  Beyond the story are deeper themes of secrets, complicated relationships (at what point is a friendship obligatory?) and mystery.  The brilliant aspect of this book is the juxtaposition of complex friendships against a frantic search for a loved one.  Female relationships are complex, but three is never an ideal number and this ratchets the tension even further.  I would highly recommend this book.  

Three friends, Ashley, Natalie and Lauren, used to be so close. However, it seems lately that the trio are not as close as they used to be and Natalie wants to change that. So, of course, a trip to Tulum, Mexico is in order - a place to "relax". 

When Ashley ends up missing, relaxing time is over and the friends must figure their stuff out and find her.

While I found this to be a pretty good read, I did have trouble with all the bickering going on with these women. And there was a LOT of bickering. They were really turning me off. I almost put the book down. However, I did finish it.

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not impact my rating or review. 

Apparently Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke are branching out to the thriller/mystery genre. Doesn't it feel like every book lately is in this genre? I didn't read their first offering, "The Good Widow" but can honestly say that if it set up like this book, I am going to pass on that one. 

"Girls' Night Out" is about a group of friends (Ashley, Lauren, and Natalie) going to Tulum, Mexico in an effort to repair the fractured friendship between the three of them. There is tension between this group and it takes a long while before you find out why, I honestly thought the reveal to one of these plot-lines was just aggravating as can be. The character of Ashley disappears (not a spoiler, it's part of the synopsis) and then Lauren and Natalie try to figure out what happened to her. The back and forth between three characters showing them before Ashley's disappearance and after doesn't mesh well. The flow was really off for me while reading. The ending was so anti-climactic, I just didn't buy it at all.

The characters of Ashley and Natalie are not only long-term friends, they are business partners. Part of the tension between them is that they received an offer from Revlon to buy their company. Natalie wants to sell and Ashley doesn't want to. I was curious about why in the world they just didn't bring up Ashley buying Natalie's share out? I mean, it seemed the simplest solution and it was weird I didn't see anyone just saying that. That whole plot point was just to show how Ashley is selfish and doesn't care about other people. 

Ashley and Lauren have tension for a very good reason. I don't want to spoil the whole thing, but I am sorry, I had zero sympathy for Lauren. What a piece of work. I wish that the authors had decided to just have her have some self awareness about things, but nope, we don't even get that in the end. Just her and her grudging forgiveness.

Lauren and Natalie's tension is mostly about wanting to be the center of Ashley's attention. At times I wondered how old these three women were (almost 40, with one of them being 40) and who does stuff like this. It was a contradiction I found throughout the book. They get angry at Ashley being self involved and managing to make people bend to her will. And then they would be jealous if she sought one of them out and not the other. 

Ashley is the center of this story (for good or bad) and she was not that interesting. Sorry, I just was getting a whiff of poor little rich girl here until we get a random aside thrown out about her marriage. I really wanted all of these women to go into therapy and just cut each other off. They all were the definition of a toxic friendship. 

The secondary characters were not developed that well. We know that the three women have husbands, but they might as well has been called husband #1, #2, and #3.

We had the character of Marco that was obviously a con-man. I don't get why the character of Ashley was even telling this guy all of her business. Her justification didn't make a lot of sense since as other characters said, what was the point of her hanging out with her friends if she was going to listen to some mystical crap from some random dude she met on a beach. 

I think it would also have been better to set up the book prologue with the three women meeting in college. I just needed to see/believe that they were actually friends. The book jumps too quickly into Ashley's disappearance and then goes back to days before she went missing and then to days after they noticed she was missing. It was hard to keep things straight. The authors do set up each chapter heading with the character and they do let you know how many days has passed or not passed, but I still found it confusing. Maybe because we have characters referring to conversations that we didn't get to see.

I wish that we had more dialogue instead of people having inner dialogue with themselves . It also didn't help that sometimes in a paragraph you would have a character having a conversation with someone in the past (both Lauren and Natalie's passages did that) and it would take me a while to realize that I wasn't in the current timeline that I was reading something that had happened before. 

The flow was off almost from the beginning. I think it's because of the before mentioned changing POVs with the different timelines. 

The setting of Tulum, Mexico was obviously very well researched. I have actually stayed there and visited the same locations that these characters did (Chichen Itza) so reading about that made me happy. I think though that besides a few things here and there, once again we don't get to see the women enjoying things, we just jump around too much. 

The ending was way too simple. I don't want to spoil, but I had a hard time with it. It felt like the two authors just gave up 3/4 of the way through. 

The only saving grace in this book is that the authors obviously did research into Mexico and the surrounding area where this book takes place, but other than that there's just weak development of all three characters and the ending was just so anti-climactic it wasn't even funny.