This book was hard to put down. I had to find out what happened on the island. Poppy Greer was bullied all through school by four girls. So ten years later she invites them to a hen party, all-expenses paid, on an isolated island. Why?
Many secrets are revealed during the late night drinking by the women, and it’s not pretty. The women are unlikeable so a little revenge was warranted. You have to read this to see how things go horribly wrong for the four women.
This is a debut novel by Sian Gilbert and she did a good job. Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for my early copy of this thriller.

DNF at 15%

From the beginning, this book is filled with overwrought cliches and one-dimensional characters that would be much more fun if they were meant to be completely unlikeable. The fact that something has happened in the past that is coming back to haunt them is far too telegraphed and there is no subtlety in any of the storytelling.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Wow! Talk about a page-turner!

This one did not disappoint. It had everything you love in a good trope: isolation, all-expenses-paid island getaway, dysfunctional female friendships, long buried secrets after secret, as well as the addictive And-Then-There-Were-None-vibes.

The pacing was excellent, the suspense was just the right amount of tension, and the delivery was satisfying.

My only hang ups were the amount of times the Lord's name was taken in vain-- ridiculously over the top in my opinion-- and how some character voices were not as strong as others and melded together (like Tanya and Annabel, for instance).

There was a bit of suspended belief in order for this to be plausible, but isn't that what we love to sign up for? There were also a few errors with editing (like random lines of zeros), but since this is an ARC, stuff like that is to be expected.

Overall, this got me out of the reading slump from the last two thrillers and was a fun, unputdownable fast read! Highly recommend!

I would like to thank NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me to read this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

High school girls can be so mean. Bullying leads to tragedy in this novel. The plot keeps you guessing about who deserves to be punished. Let’s just say if an old high school friend you haven’t seen in years offers you a free trip to an exotic location, consider first if you were kind to them. If you weren’t, stay home.

This was definitely a creepy, locked room vibes (secluded island) thriller. I will say, I found it super unbelievable. I was definitely sad for Poppy and how she was treated by the “mean girls” in school.

I liked the big plot twist towards the end and definitely didn’t see it coming. I did enjoy the book, but overall thought it was just so far fetched that these women would go to a secluded island with the one person they were once so cruel to.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️(3/5)

Thank you so much NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well this was definitely a case of mean girls who never matured. It was a quick read and very propulsive, but all of the characters were unlikeable. That was certainly the point but I like to hand at least one person to root for.

Rating:
3.75 stars

Read if you like:
Multiple POVs
Locked room mysteries
Diary entries
Deserted island settings

She Started It by Sian Gilbert starts off with an improbable premise. Four friends from high school are invited to a hen party of another former student from their school, a student who they bullied and mistreated. You wonder why they would accept the request as they havent seen or heard from this friend in years. It's explained that the hen party is on a private island and it is all expenses paid weekend holiday so these four ladies decide a free holiday is worth the awkwardness of the situation. Little do they know that their free weekend comes at a price.
Much in the fashion of most thrillers written today, none of the characters are likeable. They are self centered and sneaky. Each is harboring a secret from their friends and each will go to great lengths to protect their secret from getting exposed. Their cruelty and bullying has not changed either as they are still the typical mean girls, just no longer in high school.
If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to get over the improbabilty of the plot premise, the thriller is a quick read with lots of surprises. Each of the women's secrets slowly get revealed and the consequences are inormous. The hidden reason behind the party is not much of a surprise but there is a satisfying ending to the story nonetheless.
Thank you to Netgalley, William Morrow, and the Scene of the Crime Early Reads for the advanced copy of the book. The opinions are my.

Page turner from the start! What an amazing book. Would highly recommend.

All about a girls trip gone bad-or is it? So many twists and turns I couldn’t put it down!

I always love it when someone can finish what has been started, and this book raced to the finish line brilliantly! This was an intense, thrilling debut!

She Started It, is about a group of four women who claim to be best friends who have been invited to a private hen (bachelorette) party. The hen party is that of Poppy Greer, which they haven’t even seen her in 10 years. These women don’t care as it’s an all expense paid trip to the luxurious private island 🏝️

Once on the island, the women are reunited with Poppy. They never liked Poppy during school, in fact they went out of their way to torment and bully her. But people can change, right? So in order to get reacquainted, they start to play games. They play games such as Truth or Dare, they go on scavenger hunts, and they even lock their cell phones away.

We get to know each of these four women (Annabel, Chloe, Tanya, and Esther), with each chapter being told from one of their viewpoints. Each woman is more unlikable and despicable than the first. We also get to hear Poppy’s views and events from the past through some of her diary entries that she had written.

If you enjoy mean girl stories, I can assure you that this book takes it to a whole different level! Lots of twists and suspense in this book! A very entertaining read which I think most of my reader friends will enjoy!

Many thanks to NetGalley, William Morrow, and the author for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. Publication date: June 13, 2023. (Genre- Mystery & Thrillers, General Fiction).

Loved it!! Revenge is best served on a beautiful, isolated island with no help in sight. Chloe, Esther, Annabel and Tanya all suffer from delusion. Did I feel bad about what happened to them? NO!!!! They were awful children/teenagers who grew up to be awful adults. Their excuse for acting horribly to Poppy was that they were kids. None of them thought they did anything wrong and that it was no big deal. They terrorized poor Poppy for no reason. I can't believe they all accepted the trip and acted like they were best friends. Did they really believe Poppy wanted them as bridesmaids? Chloe, Esther, Annabel and Tanya were all hiding secrets from each other. I don't think they even liked each other. There were so many twists and turns. Loved the ending. I hope she gets everything she deserves and even more.

Definitely recommend the book. It was a great mystery/thriller. I couldn't put it down because I needed to know what happened to Poppy and what the girls did to her art project. I wasn't surprised what Poppy revealed at the end. At times, I was a little confused at who was talking. Loved the characters, story and writing style. Look forward to reading more books by the author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from William Morrow through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Annabel, Chloe, Esther and Tanya are four best friends who are pretty interchangeable, and this book is centered around them and a girl named Poppy. They all went to school together, with Poppy and Tanya being best friends until middle school, when Tanya started hanging out with the others. Tanya’s shift of loyalty meant Poppy was now a loner, with no friends.

Ten years later, the group of four are still together and have received invitations to Poppy’s bachelorette party. None of them have kept track of her, but the idea of free first-class tickets and exclusive access to a private island make them all decide to go. This turns out to be a fatal mistake…

You see, when these girls were in school, the group of four tormented Poppy. They bullied her, shamed her, and always made her feel less than. We find out how far this group of Mean Girls went as we read the parts of the book that contain Poppy’s diary from years past - but they still want that vacation, so they are all hoping Poppy has forgiven and forgotten about how they treated her in high school.

It turns out, Poppy is quite successful, and is no longer the meek, nerdy girl who was fine with being pushed around. She’s grown up, glowed up, and is now getting married. She seems to have left the past behind, and these women settle in for a weekend of drinking and sunbathing. A series of “getting to know you” games are started, leading to the women opening up to each other in ways they haven’t in years. Everything is going great, until Poppy drops a bomb on them.

Poppy wanted to see if any of them had changed. Were they good women who redeemed themselves and do things to help others, or are they the same selfish, greedy people they were in school? I think we know the answer, and the women do too…eventually. Now what will the punishment be?

This was a really fun read, a perfect summer thriller to sit by the pool (or on a deserted private island) with. As I mentioned, the women were all pretty interchangeable and unlikeable, but Poppy was a compelling character. The ending had a few twists, the biggest of which I didn’t see coming. What a great debut, I’ll be keeping an eye out on this author! Four stars.

(Thank you to William Morrow, Sian Gilbert, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on June 13, 2023).

Pub date: 6/13/23
Genre: thriller
Quick summary: Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe receive a surprise bachelorette party invitation from their old "friend" Poppy. But a deserted island paradise quickly turns into a fight for survival.

This book is a super fast read, and if you like your thrillers over the top, I think you'll like this one more than I did. It's clear from the beginning that something is up with Poppy, and I read this book in one day to figure out all the secrets. There are a few twists that definitely surprised me. Despite the short-ish length of 352 pages, it took a bit too long to reveal everything. Plus these characters were just SO unlikeable. I'd be happy to try another book by Sian Gilbert, as this one did keep me reading. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.

Thank you to William Morrow for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a struggle to finish -- absolutely no character is likeable, every scenario is ridiculous, every reveal is telegraphed long before it actually happens. I wanted to DNF this one but forced myself to keep going only to see if the big "shocking" twist I suspected at the 12% mark was in fact how it was going to end (and it was). Thoroughly disappointing.

First of all, the stunning cover had me curious and drawn to this book right from the start! It was full of drama, secrets, sweet revenge and twists. It was a super quick and hard to put down read that will have you needing to know how it ends as soon as possible! I was engaged right off the bat when the story started off with a bang. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves quick read thrillers full of drama and twists!

Thank you so much to NetGalley & William Morrow and of course the author, Sian Gilbert for the early digital copy of She Started It for my honest thoughts and review!

Revenge is a dish best served on a tropical island!! How far will people go to enact revenge on their childhood bullies?

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, I was slammed with a major plot twist!!!

Go ahead and pre-order this bad boy!!! You are going to devour it!!!

Wow! This is like Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies. I don't even know where to begin with this review. The alternating timelines flowed really well between the present-day chaos on the island and flashbacks to the past in Poppy's diary entries. I will caution you not to look at the table of contents before you start the book. I did, and as a result, I was able to mostly figure things out, although some were still shocking. Knowing definitely didn't take a way from the thrill ride that is this book. It's an amazing debut, for sure. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was an entertaining read that made me root for absolutely no one lol I thought the flashback premise was really well done and I had to suspend my disbelief that these women had the audacity to show their faces after terrorizing the MC.

Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends—or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets have kept them bonded for better or worse, even as their childhood dreams haven’t quite turned out as they’d hoped. Then one day they receive a wholly unexpected—but not entirely unwelcome—invitation from another old friend. Poppy Greer has invited them all to her extravagant bachelorette party: a first-class plane ticket to three days of white sand, cocktails, and relaxation on a luxe private island in the Bahamas.
None of them has spoken to Poppy in years. But Poppy’s Instagram pics shows that the girl they used to consider the weakest link in their group has definitely made good—and made money. Curiosity gets the better of them. Besides, who can turn down a posh all-expenses-paid vacation on a Caribbean island?
The first-class flight and the island’s accommodations are just as opulent as expected...even if the scenic island proves more remote than they’d anticipated. Quite remote, in fact, with no cell service, and no other guests. The women quickly discover they’ve underestimated Poppy, and each other. As their darkest secrets are revealed, the tropical adventure morphs into a terrifying nightmare.
This was a great read! While this basic plot line has been done before, this puts a different spin on it. Interesting characters, great dialog and and ending that doesn’t disappoint. I will read more by this writer for sure. Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for the advanced readers copy for review.

Thank you to William Morrow and Netgalley for the advanced copy. She Started It is one of the more interesting reads I have had in some time. Throughout the entire book, I couldn't decide which character I was rooting for as most didn't have many redeeming qualities. Yet I felt compelled to keep reading to learn what ultimately happened to them. A group of high school mean girls bully an outsider heartlessly and relentlessly, and years later it comes back to haunt them (an understatement) during a hen party on a luxury private island. I had figured out what was going to happen pretty early in the book, but it was still an interesting read, and I hope to read more from this author in the future.

✨REVIEW: She Started It by Sian Gilbert

⭐️ Rating: 5/5
📖 Genre: Mystery Thriller
#️⃣ Pages: 352
🗓️ Pub Date: 6.13.2023 🥳
🛑 TW: Bullying, Suicide & Self Harm

💭 THOUGHTS
One bride to be, four bridesmaids, a private island and a whole lot of revenge.

SHE STARTED IT is an outstanding debut by Sian Gilbert. I promise you that even though you may guess the big twist early on, you won’t guess everything. This book is a true example of a page turner read!

Let’s start with the cover and the setting. A beautiful private island with no cell service and no way to escape. Second, the characters and their development was perfect! And lastly, the revenge is everything! In the words of Taylor Swift, “she should keep in mind, she should keep in mind, there is nothing I do better than revenge.”

SHE STARTED IT is told from multiple point of views with past and present timelines. Gilbert did an excellent job with such a heavy topic of bullying. She was able to write in the perspective of mean girls that is so eye opening when unfortunately this is an issue in today’s youth. Gilbert took the characters darkest secrets and turned a tropical bachelorette party into their worst nightmare.

🖤My new favorite thriller and a must read for the summer!!! I highly recommend.

🖤 Available for pre-order

🖤Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

🖤Congratulations to Sian Gilbert on this upcoming release!