The Dead Girls Club: A Novel

· Crooked Lane Books
3.0
4 reviews
Ebook
288
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

One of Refinery29's and POPSUGAR's Favorite New Books

A scary story becomes far too real in this “unsettling” supernatural thriller in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts that “will keep you guessing to the very last page” (Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger)

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.

Ratings and reviews

3.0
4 reviews
Becky Baldridge
November 26, 2019
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.
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Linda Strong
December 10, 2019
Heather Cole is being haunted .... by her guilt? by someone who knows what she did 30 years ago? A ghost story that's come to life? Thirty years ago, Heather and three friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. They were obsessed with serial killers and bizarre deaths. Heather's best friend, Becca, became enamored of a story she told. The Red Lady was supposedly a witch who was killed centuries ago. Heather knows that the stories Becca tells are fiction ... but Becca's belief got her killed. Heather is now under siege ... by someone... or something ... who knows what happened ... and are determined to make her pay. A little bit supernatural ... crime fiction ... thriller .... reminding me of the scary campfire stories told to children before bedtime. ... this one seems to have it all. An interesting concept .... what a child carries with them into adulthood. After so many years, can you really trust your own memories? This well written novel bounces back and forth between the happenings of today and the adventures of Heather's club when she was 12 years old.... as she remembers. There are many twists and turns ... they will keep the reader guessing until the very surprising ending. Recommendation --- keep the light on while reading and make sure all windows and doors are locked. Many thanks to the author / Crooked Lane Books / Netgalley for the digital copy of THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
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About the author

Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror's Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year's Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda's Song, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. Until the magazine's closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls.

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