I love secretive thrillers almost as much as I love horror novels so I was excited when I heard about The Dead Girls Club because it promised a bit of both. In the end it was more of a thriller with a horror threat/thread running throughout. Those bits were creepy as heck though!

I don’t like to say too much about thrillers/mysteries/suspense novels (or whatever you like to call them) because it is far too easy to say too much so I’m going to keep this brief. Basically it is a tale told in two timelines. There is the Then and there is the Now. Heather features in both timelines because this is her story. Things start out weird when a grown up Heather receives an unwanted surprise. Someone has left an envelope in her office, tucked inside is a necklace that was last seen on a dead girl. This sends Heather into a spiral as her past comes back to haunt her.

I’ll get this out of the way first. Adult Heather is a MESS. She remains a mess and she becomes a bigger mess as more of her story is revealed in the Now. She is a professional woman with a very difficult job but you’d never know it based on some of the decisions she makes in this story. She allows her past to consume her and she acts irrationally. With all of that said, it makes sense. I mean, this woman is hiding some serious shit that would send the sanest person into a panicked spiral so I get it and these aren’t complaints. Not from me, anyway. I like imperfect characters and Heather is most definitely one of those.

“I have done a monstrous thing, but I’m not a monster. I’m not.”

In the THEN section we meet Heather and her closest friends when they’re about 12 or so. They have an obsession with true crime and all things spooky and call their little group the “Dead Girls Club”. They hang out at an abandoned house and tell each other creepy tales. The most compelling one is the story of the Red Lady. They work each other up into a frenzy with that one and it is totally believable. One of the girls is experiencing trauma at home and they attempt to summon the Red Lady and things, as they do, go awry.

I loved the backstory and the entire mythos around the Red Lady. It was goosebump inducing. It's easy to imagine how a group of young girls could become consumed with the appeal of it all. The coming of age story of these girls was a breath of fresh air. We typically get stories featuring boys and their spooky childhoods. This was a very genuine tale about girls. From the talk of periods to the petty jealousy and daily worries and easily bruised friendships, it was all very real and I enjoyed the THEN segments more than I can say. They were painful and authentic to the experience of growing up female. I would like more of this kind of fiction, please!

The Dead Girls Club may not be what I’d consider a perfect story and it has a very wispy thread of horror, but it IS super creepy and mysterious and highly readable – just the way I like my thrillers and I recommend it if anything I’ve said above intrigues you.

I received my copy for review consideration from Netgalley.

One of my biggest pet peeves with books is when the blurb is misleading. I get that it should catch the attention of would-be readers, but if you tell me it's a specific thing, I darn well expect it to be that thing. The Dead Girls Club is not a supernatural thriller. Supernatural adjacent, maybe, but other than the made-up stories of one troubled little girl and another letting it get in her head, there was nothing supernatural here. Honestly, I didn't find anything remotely thriller-like either. Here's where I put in that none of that would've been a deal-breaker for me. I still could've enjoyed a good drama with some tragedy thrown in. What I got was a lengthy, wordy story that took way too long to get through. To be brutally honest, I was bored through about 75% of this one, and it was only sheer determination that made me push through to the end. I did like some of the "Then" chapters until they became repetitive with pre-teen drama and angst, but today's Heather got on my last nerve. I finally got to Becca's death, and yes, Becca had a tragic life, but when it came right down to it, I only had one thought about the night this girl died - they were young, yes, but they were old enough to know better. There are a couple of decent twists toward the end that could've been great had the book been better executed, but they were just too little, too late for me. Then an ending that was less than satisfying, to say the least, was just adding insult to injury.

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

Not too much to say here. I will echo what other reviewers have said. The parts of the book focusing on the protagonist's childhood were great. When it moved to her as an adult the book felt off in some way and I just didn't want to keep reading further. I finished this around midnight last night since I was up fuming about the debates that were on. I think there is some promise in Walters writing, it just needs to be tightened up a bit. I thought the way that some of the characters talked to each other was weird too in some places. One of the worst parts of getting a book via NetGalley and downloading it to your Kindle is that you can't upload your notes on the book. I am too lazy to post the writing that I went what at a few times. Some of the sentences made me hard pause and wonder what the heck the author was trying to say.  

"Dead Girls Club" follows Heather Cole. She and her friends back in the early 90s formed a club that was obsessed with telling stories about serial killers, death, etc. They were pretty much the hosts from Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered before that became a thing. The girls in the group become obsessed with a woman they call the Red Lady. When Heather's best friend Becca starts talking about the Red Lady and how she's real Heather doesn't believe her. Then Becca ends up being killed. Fast forward decades later and Heather is now a child psychologist. Heather has never told anyone what happened to Becca, but now Heather thinks that the Red Lady is out there stalking her and leaving her creepy clues about what happened with Becca. 

I really can't say much about the characters. Though this book isn't written in medias res it should have been. We just get kind of pushed into the book and I felt a little lost at first. I didn't know who was who or what anyone was doing. I had to re-read sections so many times to even make sense of who was speaking sometimes.

Heather being a child psychologist was kind of laughable cause she seems to have no empathy (at least I didn't think she did) for children or the ability to relate to him. She's married to a bland dude whose name I am totally blanking on. Two of Heather's younger friends, Gia and Rachel are also kind of bland in the present, but not in the childhood portions. 

So the writing is so weird to me. Walters writes the sections dealing with Heather in her childhood so well. Then it moves to the adult portion and it was just not working for me at all. The "Then" and then "Now" format seems to be a thing in a lot of thrillers written in the past few years and I wish that it be utilized a little more judiciously. Sometimes writing in that style can make the novel great when you get a third act twist or something. But this just bogged down my reading enjoyment. Also fair warning since this came up the other day, this is written in first person present tense. It doesn't bother me as a reader, but I know it bothers others, so thought I bring that up. 

The flow wasn't great jumping back and forth between the "dead girls club" and present day Heather. I felt myself getting so confused while reading this ARC cause there were not clear spacing between paragraphs so that just made things worse for me. I am sure when it's published that will all get cleaned up.

The ending had a lot of plot holes I thought but at that point I was just glad to be done. A good first effort. I wouldn't re-read this in the future though. 

eh so far just feeling bored by this one. Hope it picks up. 

If you're spending this much time telling me how horrible HPL was maybe you shouldn't have written a story for a collection based off him.

RATING

STORIES - 3/5

PROSE - 4/5

CHARACTERS - 3/5

OVERALL - 3/5