Beautiful. Perfect. Dead.
In the peaceful seaside town of Cape Bonita, wicked secrets and lies are hidden just beneath the surface. But all it takes is one tragedy for them to be exposed.
The most popular girls in school are turning up dead, and Penelope Malone is terrified she's next. All the victims so far have been linked to Penelope—and to a boy from her physics class. The one she's never really noticed before, with the rumored dark past and a brooding stare that cuts right through her.
There's something he isn't telling her. But there's something she's not telling him, either.
Everyone has secrets, and theirs might get them killed.
Review:
Blending together juicy secrets, a twisty murder mystery, and romance, Pretty Dead Girls is best described as Pretty Little Liars meets Scream Queens, and just like those tantalizing series/shows, it's incredibly easy to devour it in one sitting.
Pretty Dead Girls focuses primarily on providing the thrills as well as the chills.
The book opens up with the murderer's perspective just as they are about to go in for their first kill. We're provided with the basics at this point: the murderer is specifically going after the Larks, a club of the most beautiful, popular girls at the local high school, and this won't be their last killing...they're just warming up.
As the book continues, the POVs continually switch between the murderer and Penelope, the leader of the Larks. I enjoyed that Monica Murphy included both POVs, as not only did it create a good level of tension and intrigue, but it also helped to develop the Larks as a whole as well as the murderer's motivation. What made everything even better, though, was the amount of suspects introduced. Almost every Lark was a suspect at some point, and I was constantly left wondering who did it. They all had their reasons! Additionally, there was the introduction of a mysterious boy named Cass who had ties to every victim. I wondered if he was behind it as well, and as he got closer and closer to Penelope, I began to wonder even more. I will say that I figured out the majority of the mystery towards the middle - finally pinning down the culprit in the last few chapters - but I was still hooked.
While I enjoyed the easy-to-read nature of this book, I will say Pretty Dead Girls lacked in character development. Penelope, Cass, and the rest of the characters often felt one-dimensional. I knew the basics about them, but I never truly got to know them. Penelope wasn't my favorite character in the world. I thought she was often superficial, judgmental, and prone to jump to conclusions. She did show some development as the novel progressed, but not nearly enough as I would've liked. Her relationship with Cass seemed stilled and a tad bit weird. When he's first introduced, it's hard to tell if he's a bad guy or a good guy, and even as the evidence started pointing in the later of the two, I still didn't like him all that much. There was a certain creep factor associated with him, which made nothing about him all that swoon-worthy.
I will say that certain parts of Pretty Dead Girls are cringe-worthy in the same way that Scream Queens and popular slasher movies such as Scary Move and Scream are; however, it's the kind of cringe-worthy that you can't look away from. In some ways, I feel as if it drove me to read the book faster.
While Pretty Dead Girls never reached the levels of recently released thrillers such as One of Us Lying and The Truth Beneath the Lies, it was still an enjoyable read - a guilty pleasure type of read in a sense.
Blending together juicy secrets, a twisty murder mystery, and romance, Pretty Dead Girls is best described as Pretty Little Liars meets Scream Queens, and just like those tantalizing series/shows, it's incredibly easy to devour it in one sitting.
Pretty Dead Girls focuses primarily on providing the thrills as well as the chills.
The book opens up with the murderer's perspective just as they are about to go in for their first kill. We're provided with the basics at this point: the murderer is specifically going after the Larks, a club of the most beautiful, popular girls at the local high school, and this won't be their last killing...they're just warming up.
As the book continues, the POVs continually switch between the murderer and Penelope, the leader of the Larks. I enjoyed that Monica Murphy included both POVs, as not only did it create a good level of tension and intrigue, but it also helped to develop the Larks as a whole as well as the murderer's motivation. What made everything even better, though, was the amount of suspects introduced. Almost every Lark was a suspect at some point, and I was constantly left wondering who did it. They all had their reasons! Additionally, there was the introduction of a mysterious boy named Cass who had ties to every victim. I wondered if he was behind it as well, and as he got closer and closer to Penelope, I began to wonder even more. I will say that I figured out the majority of the mystery towards the middle - finally pinning down the culprit in the last few chapters - but I was still hooked.
While I enjoyed the easy-to-read nature of this book, I will say Pretty Dead Girls lacked in character development. Penelope, Cass, and the rest of the characters often felt one-dimensional. I knew the basics about them, but I never truly got to know them. Penelope wasn't my favorite character in the world. I thought she was often superficial, judgmental, and prone to jump to conclusions. She did show some development as the novel progressed, but not nearly enough as I would've liked. Her relationship with Cass seemed stilled and a tad bit weird. When he's first introduced, it's hard to tell if he's a bad guy or a good guy, and even as the evidence started pointing in the later of the two, I still didn't like him all that much. There was a certain creep factor associated with him, which made nothing about him all that swoon-worthy.
I will say that certain parts of Pretty Dead Girls are cringe-worthy in the same way that Scream Queens and popular slasher movies such as Scary Move and Scream are; however, it's the kind of cringe-worthy that you can't look away from. In some ways, I feel as if it drove me to read the book faster.
While Pretty Dead Girls never reached the levels of recently released thrillers such as One of Us Lying and The Truth Beneath the Lies, it was still an enjoyable read - a guilty pleasure type of read in a sense.
3 stars
Pretty Dead Girls is now out!
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Reading this now. Nice review! I have already noticed the switching of the POVs.
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