The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas will pelt you with raw angst as soon as you enter Chapter One. Follow main character Monica through her emotional upset while rehashing the mystery of her sister’s 5th year anniversary suicide, alongside the mysterious deaths of fellow cheerleader friends.

Thomas brought up a plethora of issues that young people struggle from every day in a very real and tasteful way: suicide, teen abortion, rape, student-teacher relationships, checked-out parents while also balancing the delicate emotional state of the main character.

There was a lot happening throughout the story (and it did drag at times), which did make it hard to focus on the central drama, but overall the mystery kept feeding my interest.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I was a fan of Kara Thomas's "Little Monsters", and was thrilled to read "The Cheerleaders" prior to its release. I enjoyed the mystery in this novel, but found most of the characters unlikable and untrustworthy. I know this is a trend in thrillers right now, but it's starting to feel a bit stale. Nevertheless, I still really enjoyed reading this. It definitely kept me guessing and the end was pretty satisfying. I preferred Little Monsters, but if you're looking for a YA Thriller, definitely add this to the list.

I have liked Kara Thomas's last two YA mysteries, but I feel like The Cheerleaders firmly establishes her as THE best YA mystery author out there. The Cheerleader is edgy, suspenseful, and emotional. Monica has set out to figure out the secrets and truth surrounding the deaths of her sister and four other cheerleaders five years earlier in three separate incidents. There are so many complications and issues in this story, but it's compulsively readable. Monica has reason to distrust almost everyone as she tries to find the truth, and I wanted those answers, too.

TW: Statutory rape, murder, assault, domestic violence

There are no more cheerleaders in Sunnybrook.

Five years ago, five cheerleaders died in increasingly mysterious and brutal ways all within the space of a month. Two girls died in a gruesome car accident. Two died in a double murder while home alone. Another committed suicide. Now, the sister of the girl who committed suicide is trying to figure out what happened to all of them—and she might be in danger.

This is pretty close to the Goodreads blurb. Sounds pretty riveting, yes? Lots of stabby goodness with more knives and shit a la Scream?

Well, it's not.

Sorry Mr. Ghostface. You're not in this book.

I'm not going to go into more detail because ~spoilers~ but I did not get the horror-filled, gore fest I was anticipating. I'm just disappointed because this was not the horror-show that seemed to be advertised in the blurb.

All I'm going to say on the matter is that there was a lot of talk, some pretty awful attempts as sleuthing and getting down to the matter of what happened five years previously, more talking, petty mean girls, lots of lying, and more talk. There are quite a few pretty serious topics that were brought up (see TWs plus a (view spoiler)) that all felt jumbled and unresolved. Well, more unexplored than unresolved. (view spoiler) Action did not happen until 90% in—although there were a lot of red herrings to the mystery. Ha...I said more than anticipated.

I generally don't comment on writing style in ARCs, but holy moly. 75% (since my review seems to have lots of made-up percentages), of the book went something like this: full sentence. fragmented sentence. For example:

"I leave her and make myself a vodka cranberry in the kitchen. Drain it in two gulps, hoping it will loosen me a bit, before I'm dragged into a group of dance team girls."

It makes for very choppy writing, which gave me a headache and distanced me from the main character. Not that there was much emotion coming from her at all. In her words:

"I was tired of being numb and I wanted to prove to myself I could feel something."

Girl, you spent the entire book trying to feel something and now we both feel numb.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

"I am a victim, whether or not I feel like one."
^
I wanted to include more of this quote, but it contains spoilers, so I'll let you experience the rest of what Monica has to say there when you read the book for yourself. ;)

I know some readers like to write off any type of YA novel as cheap and unworthy of the same type of attention that adult literature receives, but I'm here to tell you that's a load of BS. I've always tried to review each genre of book that I read based on the target audience that it's marketed toward, so when you see a review I've written for a book created for teens, it's those readers that I have in mind. That said, Kara Thomas has a way of taking YA thrillers and turning them into an experience that is appealing for both youth and adults alike, or at least those who are interested in reading about characters in that age range. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Little Monsters last year, so much so that I finished it in one sitting during our annual expedition to Alabama, and knew this writer has something special going for her. While I'm sure I could have read this one in similar fashion on our trip next week, I simply couldn't wait that long to dive into The Cheerleaders.

"I just have so many questions still."

"I do too," Mrs. Ruiz says. "But after a while, searching for answers felt like grasping around in the dark. At some point, you have to choose to live in the light."

Even though I flew through this book due to it's compulsive nature and easy readability, I feel it necessary to state that this story is anything but light and cheesy. It's heavy, it deals with real issues that plague teens currently, and absolutely nothing is sugar coated. {Content Warnings will be listed below in spoiler tag.} Most of the story is told from Monica's present day POV, but we also get some sections from 5 years prior narrated by Monica's deceased sister Jennifer. (Also, we have one section narrated by a character I'll leave nameless to wrap up one section, which was classic KT and absolutely brilliant. Tehehehehe.) The idea is that there are many working parts that come together in the end; think of the old saying of how a butterfly flaps it's wings and causes a tsunami halfway around the world. We have three separate mysteries here: the car accident that killed Bethany and Colleen, the murder of Julianna and Susan, and the suicide of Jennifer. It seems overwhelming at first glance but trust me, it works well.

Clearly Jennifer's death is what drives Monica's initial investigation, but I adore how this rogue journey slowly brings Monica back to the land of the living. When the book starts out, she's not in a good place. We learn early on how she's spent her summer and what she's been going through, and my heart just broke for her. She makes a bosom buddy in Ginny along the way, and I love how the author chose to focus on this blossoming relationship without ruining Monica's other relationships; sure, they have to work through some things but it's refreshing to see an author choosing to build up female relationships with characters who overall support each other, rather than only showing us the backstabbing, catty nature of teenage girls.

If you've enjoyed Thomas's books in the past, I can't see you feeling any differently about this one. I had pieces of this one figured out before the reveal, but man if Kara didn't get me on that last one. The tiny details she chose to use to connect various aspects were so clever and engaging that it's easy to see how much she grows as an author with each book she writes. Highly recommended! I'm off to grumble and complain about having nothing good to read until her next novel is published. All hail the queen of the YA thriller!

After reading Kara Thomas’ two thrillers last year, I knew that this year’s thriller, The Cheerleaders would be just as terrifying and suspenseful as her previous ones. It definitely fit the bill for eerie thriller, though I wasn’t as creeped out as I had hoped to be.

Life the past five years for Monica has been hard, ever since her sister died, and her four friends died as well, things have just been rough. Two separate incidents killed four of her sister, Jen’s friends and when everything became too much for her, Jen took her own life. Now as the five year anniversary starts to roll around, Monica begins to question things. Starting with wondering why her stepfather still has Jen’s old cell phone.

Soon Monica and a girl from her class, Ginny, begin to look into the events that surrounded Jen’s friends’ deaths and even Jen’s herself. Tracking people down who knew Jen and the cheerleaders five years ago isn’t exactly easy, especially trying to see if they can remember something. All the while we watch as Monica deals with her own life struggles. She had an event happen to her over the summer that has pretty much left her shaken and has changed her whole attitude on life. She’s not quite the same person she once was, though since we didn’t know her then, we can only take that at face value.

Everyone always assumed that the accident involving two of the cheerleaders was just that, and that the murder of the other two cheerleaders was solved as they caught the man they suspected of being the murderer before he died. Case closed. Monica’s stepfather was one of the police officers who worked the case latter case. But something never sat right with Monica, hence all her digging and investigating.

This book kind of surprised me in some ways. The majority of Monica’s investigating was trying to figure out what really happened to the cheerleaders who were murdered and what Jen’s connection to it all was, that maybe she was murdered too for knowing something. She strives to find answers, but doesn’t expect a part of her past to catch up with her.

I feel like the pacing might have been a little different this time around than in Kara’s previous thrillers. It wasn’t overly slow with Monica’s investigating, but I felt like there was a definite change in pace to what I had initially anticipated. It was enough to keep me turning the pages though as Monica continued to get closer before hitting yet another brick wall. There was definitely a lot of tension to the story, especially as Monica struggles to keep her life from falling apart.

I felt like I wasn’t really able to devise my own speculations with this one. There was simply so much going on and I was trying to find that connection to all of it. When it’s finally revealed by the end, I knew there was no way of me having seen any of that! Lol! I enjoy being taken by surprise like that!

I really enjoyed Monica’s character in this one! Her struggles that she was dealing with felt very real. Granted some of her choices were so far beyond what I would’ve done, I still felt like the majority of her actions were very relatable and realistic. She’s definitely a heroine I could get behind and root for. What also made the story interesting was that every now and then, we would get a chapter’s worth of details from Jen five years ago before and during all the events that took place. These segments were well-timed and placed and became relevant to the part of Monica’s investigation and kind of let us know whether she was on the right trail or not.

The ending, as I said, was surprising! There was a lot more to it all than I had expected. Knowing the full scale of whodunit and all the whys wasn’t something I would ever get close to realizing. Maybe I got to part of the conclusion of the story, but definitely not the latter half! It never bothers me when that happens because I get so wrapped up in the mystery, I just sometimes forget to try and solve it!

The Cheerleaders was a most interesting thriller with quite the twisted string of mysteries! There’s more than one that will need to be solved and just when you think you might see a connection between them, be prepared to be turned in another direction! The Cheerleaders was rather twisted but in the most enjoyable of ways! Definitely a read to keep you guessing long before it’s over!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars


The Cheerleaders releases July 31, 2018

I really enjoyed this book and found it to be fast paced and interesting. I think most readers will find it relatable. As a more mature reader of YA, I found this book to be somewhat reminiscent of the earlier Christopher Pike books which added to my enjoyment.
I would recommend for older readers in the YA group as it does deal with some issues that may be considered more mature.
I will definitely read more of Kara Thomas' books in the future.

When I do review I hate to give away any information that would ruin the book for anyone else. I’m vague and not very specific in the details. I hate giving away anything. Of course when I write the review for my use I explain a lot that is in the story. With this book I will have to be vague, there is so much that is intertwined that to give a little bit away would ruin it.
I love a good mystery and I would put this in the category of a mystery. The story is about a young girl trying to solve the brutal murders of a group of cheerleaders which in turn led to her older sister committing suicide. There are a lot of threads that intertwine in this book and it wraps up in a wonderful awe moment ending.
When a book makes you think back on the story and the events that led to the ending you know that you found yourself a new favorite book.

I’ll be honest, my eyes are drawn to covers and their art immediately. A good cover can sell me on a book and this cover did just that. I loved the simplicity yet creepiness to it and immediately was reading the summary to see if it was something that I would want to request to read and it definitlley was!

This book had me captivated from the start. “Connect the dots”. There’s something missing and I definitely had to keep reading to find out what that was. The cheerleader deaths all seemed fishy and connected from the start. Monica’s intuition leads her to explore these deaths and with the help of Ginny, they are quite the detectives which is more to say of her actual police stepfather, Tom. Monica’s family really got under my skin but it only added to the urgency of figuring out the mystery of the cheerleaders’ deaths.

This was a page turner and wasn’t very predictable at least for me. New information and “connecting the dots” wasn’t so easy for me. When I once thought I had made a connection, I was very wrong. The ending was twisted in more than one way and I was very shocked to to the end.

Although this is considered Young Adult (YA), the book was very mature and is recommended this for any age range. I don’t feel like a book should be !usted as YA solely due to the main characters’ ages. The teenage dilemmas that occur in the book are easy to understand through a teenaver’s eyes.

Another reason for my high rating and appreciation to the book is how all information given is important. Everything comes full circle and there is no information given that isn’t important to the story conclusion as there is nothing worse than reading a book and wondering why 50 pages was even relevant.

I highly recommend The Cheerleaders. It’s shocking, twisted, and full of drama the entire read!

This was a good quick read! The characters felt real and you could connect with many of the issues that were occurring in the storyline.

When a group of girls , all being cheerleaders at the same high school die within a short time of each other it definitely causes questions and most of the adults don't seem to want to provide answers. Monica and Jen are sisters and Jen is the last to pass away of an apparent suicide, but is that what really happened? Monica is set to find out what really happened to her sister as well as Jen's friend that were gone before they should have. There are so many secrets and just enough players to keep the story moving at a great rhythm. The plot has twists and kind of leads you to think a certain way then it'll have you questioning that. I didn't figure out the ending well ahead of time so that is a major plus!

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the opportunity to read this advanced eCopy in exchange for my honest review

This was the first book I have read by Kara Thomas and I was instantly hooked. The Cheerleaders is a true crime type novel where Monica, the main character, is working to solve the mystery of what happened to her dead sister and four other cheerleaders who were murdered.

I liked the structure of the novel in that there are chapters where you get to hear from the other characters' perspectives, which helps to further deepen the aspect of mystery. I found myself often looking forward to these flashback chapters or chapters told from a different perspective in order to try and solve the mystery. Although the novel was fast paced, I did have a little bit of trouble keeping track of some of the characters and their story lines (specifically Ginny and her father). This could very well just be a reflection on myself as a reader and my desire to read as quickly as possible because I was hooked. Even though this is a novel I most likely will not be able to adopt in my curriculum, it is certainly one I would keep in my classroom library as I can see this novel appealing to many of my students.

Monica is a member of her school's dance team. She turns amateur detective as the five year anniversary of her sister Jen's suicide --and four of her sister's cheerleader friends' deaths approach. Monica is convinced that the case-closed-and-shut ending five years before isn't the full truth. So, she sets out to solve it with her new friend Ginny. Monica's sleuthing isn't easy, though. She has to hurt those she cares about, and she has to examine her own memories and emotions more than is comfortable for her.

The Cheerleaders is a decent true crime mystery. Fans of the genre will enjoy it, but I felt bored. Too often, I found myself unable to remember details or characters as they came up again later on in the story. And it's not like I read it over several months and couldn't remember as time chipped away at that short-term memory, but I read it over several days and usually don't have too much of a problem keeping up with details in a story. It just didn't captivate my attention the way that I expected it to, and I'm not sure why. Maybe the cold open on post-abortion Monica? How her mother was supposed to be a more important character the way that Monica talked/narrated about her, but I just couldn't get a handle on her? How there were definite parallels between Monica drifting away from her friends and hanging out with outsider Ginny like Jen was drifting away from Susan and Juliana and spending more time with loner Ethan? But then the parallel didn't come full circle? (Or maybe it did, and I had just stopped paying attention by that point in the book?)

Either way, The Cheerleaders will appeal to readers who want grit with their mystery.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC provided. This is my first book by this author. The story was interesting however it was unbelievable. I didn’t connect to any of the characters and I disliked Monica the most. She told more lies than truths. The ending was anticlimactic. The book had a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions. I’m disappointed.

Fun read but problematic bits have this at a 2 for me. Kids who like murder mysteries will like it. I wanted more parental info at the end too.

"I am a victim, whether or not I feel like one."

I'm a bit torn as to whether or not this book was 3.5 stars or 4, so we'll split it at 3.8.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed this book, but I figured out the killer - and I usually don't. I'm pretty bad at seeing what is right in front of me. <spoiler> But I knew at about 40% or so, that Brandon was a seemingly superfluous character. Why mention Monica's pregnancy, or fling with Brandon? It played no real part in the story. So I figured out that he must have played some role in the cheerleaders deaths. </spoiler> I was however glad that my original suspect turned out to be innocent.

This book deals with some heavy hitting topics ranging from abortion, to student teacher relationships, and a few things in between. The book starts out with Monica dealing with the consequences of her summer fling. When she does some snooping around her step dads office she comes across some letters and a phone that lead her to believe there is something more to her sisters death, and maybe even of her sisters friends.

She chooses to not involve her old friends, and makes a new friend a long the way. With the help of Ginny, Monica digs into the past to find out just exactly what happened to her sister. Its a quick read that shouldn't take even the slowest of readers more than a cumulative day, and thoroughly enjoyable even with its predictability.

I did not see the ending coming on this one but I can’t decide if it’s because it was so well-written or because it just didn’t seem plausible.

This is my one of my favorite genres and I enjoyed the book; however, there were a lot of characters to sift through and at times, I had a difficult time keeping them straight.

I enjoyed that some chapters were told from other characters’ points of view.

All in all, a fairly solid read. If 1/2 stars were a thing, this one would have been 3 1/2 for me. I liked it, but can’t rate it as high as my favorite 4-star reads.

Thank you, Netgalley and Random House Children’s, for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Five years ago, five cheerleaders from the same high school all died mysteriously. Two were killed in a horrific single car accident; two were murdered supposedly by a neighbor and one commited suicide. Monica is the sister of one of the girls and is not entirely convinced that her sister committed suicide. She also has questions about the murders and the accident.

Monica discovers her sisters cell phone hidden in the back of her stepfather's desk. Her stepfather is a police officer and was the first on the scene of the accident and the man who shot and killed the neighbor who was blamed for the murders. After sending an text to an unknown number on her sister's cell phone, Monica tumbles headlong into the mystery.

I read this in three sittings. Very compelling story with exceptional writing. There were a few holes in the plot, however, it's a great story. And the ending completely surprised me!.

Very cool set up of how one younger sister ventures out to find the truth behind her older sisters suicide. Lots of plot twists and turns as we read the younger sister and her journey along w the past view of the troubled sister. All coming together in one heck of an ending that quite honestly I didn’t see coming! Well done! I can’t wait to read more by said author.

I loved both of Kara Thomas’s previous books so I went into this one with pretty high expectations and I wasn’t disappointed. I still have some questions though about some of the story, but overall it was a very satisfying read that was very hard to put down.

Monica is a very easy character to like, she has dealt with a lot in her life and she has become tough because of it. She does make mistakes, and some of them were quite huge. Like having an affair with an older man and having to deal with the consequences from that, such as his being the new soccer coach at her school. Her sister’s suicide also weighs heavily on her, and her mother and stepdad won’t discuss it with her. The five year anniversary is the breaking point for her, and she becomes determined to find out some answers. Her journey into what really happened has many twists and turns and lots of suspects, but ultimately she comes face to face with what really happened and it is quite frightening.

Ginny, Monica’s new friend, is also a very interesting character. She is a little bit quirky, but likable. I often wondered why she was so willing to help Monica find out the truth, and was quite surprised at the end when we find out a bit of her past. That was a twist I didn’t see coming. Ginny is a survivor and a good influence on Monica.

Most of the book is told from Monica’s point of view, but we get some glimpses of her sister’s last few days in short chapters from her perspective. Jen’s perspective didn’t shed a whole lot of light on the murders and accident, but she did offer a way for us to learn what was going on in the girl’s lives before everything that happened to them. I wanted a little bit more from Jen, I didn’t think we got a complete picture of why she committed suicide, but that was the only flaw in the story.

Another riveting and fast paced thriller that will keep you reading and wanting more. If you haven’t read any books from Kara Thomas, pick one up, and then plan on spending many hours not being able to put it down.

Can you solve the mystery first in this story about five cheerleaders who all died within 1 month of each other five years ago? Two in a car accident, two at the hands of a murderer, and one by suicide. Are the deaths related? Is it possible the same killer caused all five deaths? Monica, the younger sister of the one who committed suicide is determined to find out what really happened along with her new friend Ginny who may have a few of her own secrets.
Give this book to anyone looking for a dark suspense or mystery story. There's nothing too graphic in here, but there are mentions of inappropriate sexual situations and underage partying.
This book was provided to me for free through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.