The Good Girls audiobook

This is a solid 4.5 stars rounded up. More of a slow-burn, character driven suspense read than a breakneck, page-turning thriller, but I enjoyed the "mood" of the book a lot and enjoyed returning to the pages and sitting with the characters. In particular, I loved the small town Colorado feel; the town was vivid for me, as were the typical "types."Where I think for some readers they might not be as sure-footed with this one is that it's in third person and it's multi-POV, with some chapters a bit more omniscient. There are also many chapters that are half police interview/half narrative. I enjoy close third person, and it's part of what contributed to the tone I ended up liking about it--it had a grander feel than a typical 1st person might have. But the trade-off is definitely that more almost languid mood and there's a little bit of distance to the story. This wasn't a "whodunnit" read for me, but more of a whydunnit... even with the things I was able to piece together relatively quickly, I enjoyed the journey and what the book had to say. It's all about high school girl stereotypes, the assumptions we make, etc.So really it's all about the characters: Claude the "slutty" bad girl, Avery the peppy cheerleader, Gwen the intense academic, and Emma the "good girl." Emma is murdered at Anna's Run, a treacherous stretch of river and Claude, Avery, and Gwen are suspects--they all had a reason to want Emma gone. We get Emma as a character through her diary entries from the year+ leading up to her death. She was obsessed with solving the murder of another girl who also died at Anna's Run--Lizzy, Gwen's older sister. You move through Emma's diary, seeing how deep she got and who might have actually killed her... while the present day narrative covers a 48 hour stretch as the police hyper-focus on Claude, Avery, and Gwen.There was just one aspect of the ending structure that I'm not 100% sold on, though it's a quibble (and one I won't elaborate on for spoilery reasons). There were also a few moments where the book's message as a bit heavy-handed, and I could see some readers chafing against it. Ultimately a solid multi-POV moody suspense read that I think will appeal to many Actual Teens. The girls are well drawn and in many cases play against type (or when they play to type, they do so with depth). There's also solid LGBTQIA rep I know many readers will be drawn to/appreciate. One main character is bisexual and another is a lesbian. One is out, the other is not, and there are no forced outing scenes or scenes of bigotry/violence against queer characters. No gays are buried, either!

Absolutely amazing! A new favorite. I don't exaggerate when I say Scribd has changed my life. I saved a ton of audiobooks there so I have books to listen to while multitasking. These are those books that I'm kinda interested in, but don't see myself physically reading them. This one was one of them. Final Draft was another. And both became my favorites.I love how random books can become favorites. Especially those that don't have high ratings on Goodreads. They prove not to believe the ratings. Plus because two of my most hated books have 4.38 stars, while this amazingness has only 3.64 and final draft has 3.5.At first I was confused, because it's multi pov and I wasn't sure if I'll be able to differentiate everyone, but the characters were amazing. I loved them and loved how all of them had/done at least one thing I didn't agree with. Even if I started to suspect who was the murderer maybe halfway through, there was still a few surprises at the end and my brain got twisted more than once.I read it in one day. I just couldn't sleep until I knew how it ends.Oh, and I'm in love with the cover.[IDK if this is considered a spoiler or not, so only read it if you don't care.]The one thing I didn't like that much was the cheating and how it was handled. I mean it was nice, that they reamined friends and there was no big drama, but in reality I don't think this is how it goes. Or how it should go.It's just me, or queers get out of cheating pretty easily in ya books?The ones they have cheated on are always so understanding, but like it is still cheating and betraying their trust. I understand it's a small town that was left behind in the Stone Age, but they should at least show some remorse.

3.75i am once again asking gr to give me HALF STAR OPTIONS

The thing is, girls can tell. There’s a little voice in our heads that says get out, get out, but men spend years telling us to ignore it. To tell ourselves we’re wrong. A lot of the discussions really stuck out to me in The Good Girls and I think it’s a great addition into the teen thriller genre. It’s unique in that it is far more character driven and has a much slower pace than what many of us are used to. However, the little twists that are sprinkled throughout will still keep you guessing. Bartlett’s writing is quite seamless and flows really beautifully as we cross between the third person point of view chapters, police interviews and diary entries. There’s definitely a moody vibe in here that lends well to the book’s overall content. As mentioned, there are multiple points of view in The Good Girls, but no one gets lost. We follow four main girls: Emma, the good (and dead) girl, Claude, the resident ‘bad girl’ who owns her sexuality but is belittled for it, Avery, the picture perfect cheerleader and Gwen, the focused and dedicated student. When Emma is missing and presumed dead at the beginning of our story all of the girls are under suspicion. Each girl was wonderfully fleshed out and I really felt I understood them all. We get to experience their lives and it helps us understand the underlying motives behind each person.I will say, that while I was able to guess a lot of what was happening that didn’t take away from the story at all because it still left the question of why it was happening, and that was the deeper question of the book. This could definitely have fallen to the classic ‘children/teens handling something that they should have gone to an adult for’ but in the context, I believe it can makes sense. This is a small town and something like the situation these girls are in is already difficult enough to see justice for (deliberately trying to be vague here). Really appreciated the queer rep in here! We have a main character who is bi and discusses the idea of performative actions and the deep feeling of being misunderstood, especially when in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender (because guess what they’re still bi!). There’s also a non-out lesbian lead as well and while I don’t come from a small town I think the handling of this and how much it means to come out on your own terms is dealt with really well. *ARC provided by Edelweiss for an honest review*

3.5 rep - personnages bi, lesbiennescw/tw - mort/meurtresun livre que j'ai bien aimé lire et qui m'a bien divertie ! les personnages sont tous très intéressants. les différents point de vus (journaux intimes, pov, interrogatoires) apportent les différents profils et intérêts, ce qui est cool. on ne se perd pas entre les différents personnages et évènements (passé et présent). par contre.. virez cette équipe de police. ils sont inutiles.autrement, c'est un thriller jeunesse. je n'ai pas vraiment été à fond dans l'histoire et si investie que ça. je n'ai pas ressenti cette atmosphere ou quoique ce soit. en conclusion, des sujets assez lourds abordés qui étaient plutôt pas mal. des personnages intéressants.un bon livre pour les jeunes qui veulent se lancer dans le thriller !!

You can also read my review here: https://devouringbooks2017.wordpress.... Review: 3.5 StarsI requested an ARC of The Good Girls because I really enjoyed The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett. The Good Girls is completely different from The Winter Duke and not what I normally read, so I was a little nervous that I wouldn't like it. I picked it up because I needed a change of pace from my typical reads and I'm actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The Good Girls was a fast paced YA thriller that wound up tackling some really important issues.While I feel like the mystery aspect of this novel was poorly done I still really loved this book, and not for the reasons that I expected to. The Good Girls dove into some heavy topics and the struggles that teenage girls face. It focused on three girls who each struggled with some pretty big issues. Avery struggled with perfectionism and parents who placed some really unhealthy expectations upon her. Claude struggled with being labeled a slut because she was sexually active. Gwen struggled with competing for a scholarship for her only chance to get into college while also grieving her sister's death. This book really highlighted the struggles that young girls face and I thought that all three of these girls' struggles were so real and easy to relate to and empathize with.The thing I found so interesting about this novel is that it explored how parents can affect their teens. There were several different parenting styles explored and it was easy to see how these parents had affected their children's actions. Personally I found Avery's relationship with her parents the most interesting. It was extremely unhealthy and it made me so angry. On the other hand, I felt that Claude's relationship with her mother was a little too far on the other side of the spectrum. While Avery's parents were extremely controlling and expected her to be perfect, Claude's mom was a little too hands off. I feel like parents are hardly ever present in YA and while not all of the relationships were healthy I think it added important context to the lives of teenagers. I would like to see more parents in the YA genre and this book delivered flawed families that felt real.One thing I totally didn't expect was that this novel was told in different formats. I'm actually really intimidated by different formats for some reason, so I don't know if I would have picked it up if I knew, but I actually loved that aspect of the novel. It included diary entries, blog posts, police interviews, text messages and more. All of that was alongside the stories following the three girls. The formatting of this novel really brought it to life and made it interesting. I felt like including those aspects added to the whole story and now I am much more willing to give books told in different formats a chance.I did feel like this book fell apart a bit at the end. I felt like the reveal had no build up to it and fell a bit flat and the twist just had me confused. There were a few holes and motivations that didn't make sense to me. As a mystery I think that this book falls a bit flat, but that's not to say that I wasn't on the edge of my seat at times or invested in the story. Plot wise I think this book struggled at times, but character wise it was a lot deeper than I expected.

Einige Dinge waren vorhersehbar, aber an sich ein toller, kurzweiliger Jugendthriller.

This is a YA mystery/thriller surrounding the deaths (one declared suicide, the other murder) of two different high school girls in a small town in Colorado. The story surrounds three different high school girls-- the "slutty" partier, the cheer captain, and the academic achiever-- who are questioned by police after "good girl" Emma Baines goes missing (and is presumed to be murdered because of a video circulating of a person pushing a small blonde off a bridge). I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it was hard for me to put it down: I read it in a day, which I don't do often especially for 200+ page books. It was that good to me! I loved the different points of view and the both pace at which and the way everything unraveled throughout the novel. There were enough twists to keep it interesting. Its predictability at times was just enough; the right level to make me feel less anxious than I normally would be reading a mystery/thriller. I appreciated that, as this is not a genre I read often and I hate feeling anxious while reading! My biggest issues, and the reasons I couldn't give it a 5-star rating, are these: Emma's diary entries and the girls' stories were much more detailed than they realistically would be at a police questioning, but I understand this was for storytelling purposes. The police were also just conveniently really stupid, to the point where I found it unbelievable, but then again it certainly wouldn't be the first or last time that cops were lazy and incompetent. There were also a few plot holes, and some plot points that were almost too convenient in my opinion, but I was able to overlook this because I enjoyed the characters and writing style so much. Most importantly, it lacked diversity in representation: there should have been characters of colour. I can honestly only think of one character in the book who was described as having brown skin; there's no reason why there couldn't have been characters of colour in this book.This is also minor in the grand scheme of my critiques, but it's something I always like to point out: I really wished that the word lesbian had been used at least once for Gwen instead of always "gay": that's my larger critique about lesbian characters in media. But I want to reiterate to that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A lot of the content was super heavy and dark, so please read the content warnings below before picking up the book. If it's safe for you, I do think this is an amazing book that I thoroughly enjoyed. But if you can't read it, or you have to put the book down, or can't finish it, that's absolutely okay. CW: rape, sexual assault, rape culture, pedophilia, drugs, alcohol, addiction, guns, murder, death, mentions of suicide, eating disorders, body image issues, dismissing and demonizing of SA survivors, cops threatening violence, cheating, classism, imbalance of power dynamics, biphobia, homophobia

be gay do crimes résume bien ce livre

Coup de coeur !

Thank you to HCC Frenzy for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.4.5/5 stars. "Girls can be one thing or the other. We are good, or we are bad. We are smart, or we are stupid. We are the Madonna, or we are the whore." This book was a wild mystery ride and I loved it! It kept me guessing and trying to piece together clues all the way to the end. It also tackles the ways in which girls are treated by others, CW sexual assault, and it shows female characters reclaiming control over the narratives of their lives. I have been enjoying the mysteries with the mixed media style. This one uses police interviews, text conversations, blog posts, and diary entries as well as presenting a clear narrative to follow. The characters in this one were really well written. I really liked Claude's character. She was strong and she knew who she was and she wasn't afraid of it. She also had insecurities that she struggled with through the book. Avery and Gwen were also really interesting characters with their strengths and weaknesses. Each girl has her own motivations for possibly murdering Emma, and watching their stories unravel and become more and more linked kept me guessing constantly. The mystery aspect was twofold because it wasn't just us trying to figure out what happened to Emma, but Emma's diary entries showed that she was looking into the death of her friend Lizzy from a few years before. It left me trying to guess how their stories would end up linked, and I wasn't disappointed. The mystery was really well handled. I was back-and-forth on my ideas about what had happened and who had done it, but I did end up being right in the end. I thought the writing style was easy to follow and it flowed really well. The switches between the characters felt natural. The author did a good job of setting up the emotions hanging over a scene, and there were several times where I got chills. CWs: in addition to the topic of sexual assault this book also deals with teen drug use and suicide.

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight The Good Girls was quite a trip! From the start, I was so invested in what happened to Emma, and what the girls we read about had to do with it. It's clear from the start that this will not be a cut and dry murder investigation. And a big part of the reason why is because the police have seemingly doled out roles for the girls to play before they even begin to gather evidence. It's so clear from the start that they'd love to pin any and all crimes on the "town bad girl" Claude. But as we the reader know, both from the start and as the book evolves, no person is all good or all bad. And while the mystery of what happened to Emma (and other young women before her) is at the forefront of the book, it tackles a host of other issues as well. From the controlling nature of some of the parents, to inappropriate behavior from teachers and staff, to the young women in the book being shoved into roles for the convenience of society, it's definitely more than a simple whodunit. The characters are all fairly well-developed (especially for a mystery), and while I'd probably have liked to have been a bit more connected, I did enjoy them regardless. I also enjoyed their interactions with everyone else, especially each other. Bottom Line: I found myself completely drawn into the story from the start, wanting to know all the answers, and I found the mystery satisfying throughout. 

Read an ARC from NetGalleyTrigger warning: sexual assault, rape culture, predatory teacher, murder, suicide, substance abuse, gunsThis twisty read follows the investigation for four girls. Three of them perhaps have something to do with the fourth’s murder. Secrets come out, and to protect each other and their truths, they have to stand up to a police department which doesn’t believe them and a school administration actively working against them.Complex, evenly paced with a compelling, complex characters who are neither “good” nor “bad,” The Good Girls is a layered read that delivers a satisfying mystery and catharsis.I am hooked on Bartlett’s use of female-led ensemble casts. The girls in this book have such deep inner lives that are intricately woven among themselves and within the context of the mystery. Each one has her own motivations and flaws, which kept me guessing as to the true circumstances behind Emma’s death.This work also features deft use of interviews and newspaper clipping. The way those feed into contextualizing the murder and seeing Lorne from beyond the scope of the investigation provides so much immersion. It also helps introduce the subplot which led to the murder effectively. The reader gets a glimpse into the established attitudes towards students accusing their former teachers of misconduct, which helps set the stakes for what kind of uphill battle Claude, Gwen, and Avery are up against.Each of our three girls are queer, and the rep felt true to me. What I did very much appreciate is that the girls’ queerness isn’t part of the forces working against them. The exploration is very interior and does not play a role in the final reveals. What I also appreciated were the nuances around how students may be experiencing the final semesters of college. Much care is taken into depicting what each girl would want from her future, based on her wants but also on the expectations placed. They all also have such different families that seeing those dynamics tug on the tension throughout added extra layers from start to finish.Rich, complex, and ultimately heavy, it’s a story about three girls trying to do right by their classmate and each other. Perfect for fans of Sadie by Courtney Summers.

4.25/5 stars!“The thing is, girls can tell. There’s a little voice in our heads that says get out, get out, but men spend years telling us to ignore it. To tell ourselves we’re wrong.”This book contains: diary entries, cheer practice, rivers, scholarships, interviews, wigs, big coats, videos, gunshots, championships, drugs and a lot of secrets.Well, this book has A LOT going on… but my experience is very positive!What I liked so much about this book was definitely the mystery. The plot is really well made and (in my humble opinion) the outcome of the story was not predictable. And that kept me interested the entire book. After finishing a chapter, I got more and more intrigued and I still couldn’t put my finger around what was going on.Another thing I really liked about this book is the format. The book is composed of a mixture of interviews, “normal” chapters, reports, tweets, blog posts, etc. It really made the book even more interesting! There are also several points of view in this, but it’s made tastefully and you will not be confused by the characters.I will say the only thing that didn’t make me rate this higher was the timeline. It was a bit confusing and sometimes I had a hard time trying to figure out if the story was in the past or present within the same chapter - especially in the last chapters. But to be honest, it didn’t bother me too much.Overall I really enjoyed this book! For me it was the kind of mystery that I couldn’t figure out the truth until the very end, and that was really satisfying for me as a reader.The truth is: it’s a VERY heavy book, in a lot of ways. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the book deals with very serious matters that I personally wasn’t expecting to read. So here’s your warning: if you’re considering reading this book, please know there are major trigger warnings for sexual assault and substance abuse.Blog | Bookstagram