This was a solid paranormal thriller that moves back and forth in time between present day and when the protagonist was a tween in the early 90’s. I loved the whole concept of the Dead Girls Club, and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. The characters were a bit frustrating at times, but I think that worked with the story - they aren't necessarily supposed to be likable. My only small complaint is that the final action happened so close to the end. I wanted to read more! I was initially drawn to this novel because my friends and I had a similar interest in the macabre as kids, and it did not disappoint. I plan to seek out more titles from this author.

The minute I read the blurb about this book I knew I had to read it. Jumping back and forth between the past and the present, an unreliable narrator, rituals for conjuring a witch, a murder club made up of young girls... heck yes! I was here for it. I wanted it to be amazing, with a crazy twist that would leave my jaw on the floor.

And there were some great things about this book. Although it started off slowly for me, more slowly than I would have anticipated, the pick up towards the end was worth it. There were little mysteries throughout the book besides the main one, causing me to wonder exactly who wanted to make Heather pay. Heather's downward spiral as the book goes on was great as well, which I think really amped up the tension.

Unfortunately, things fell flat at the end, which is why this book only gets a C grade from me. The little mysteries ended up having really silly explanations. I wanted more from them than what they were. And the end of the big mystery disappointed me as well. I think the author tried to throw in a twist that just didn't work for  me. And I found Heather to be unlikeable in a way that made me not really care about her. And I needed to care about her, at least a little.

I don't know. I just wanted MORE. And I simply didn't get it.

Book told in dual timeline, Then and Now. The plot keeps you guessing but the ending is completely unexpected, and not in a good way. The author should have left more clues along the way. The ending just felt like the author was more focused on shock value rather than respecting her readers. Shame though, it could have been a solid book.

Review by 2shay……….

Brilliant and creepy!

Within the first few pages, I was hooked! The author’s use of phrasing had me intrigued with Heather immediately. Heather is a smart, well-educated child psychologist with a wonderful, loving husband and a peaceful, satisfying life. I needed to know how she arrived there. I knew from the beginning that she had done something dreadful as a child. She killed her best friend.

Ms. Walters uses flashbacks beautifully to unravel the events of Heather’s childhood. Childhood friends, four girls, with a similar obsession with the macabre that so many children, myself included, shared. Heather and Becca were the best of friends. ”Friends Forever” read the necklace the two girls wore in solidarity. If you’re old enough, you may remember those, they were hearts cut in half in a jigsaw pattern, and each friend wore one half. I had one until it turned my neck green and my mother made me take it off. They were cheap trinkets.

Heather and Becca, along with their other friends, Rachel and Gia, formed The Dead Girls Club, discussing everything from scary books to serial killers they heard about on the news. It was just a harmless club until Becca became obsessed with a made up story about The Red Lady. Becca was a smart and talented kid, a story teller and artist. She was the natural leader of the group, and the other girls complied when she wanted to contact The Red Lady with a ritual. It brought back memories of being scared silly when fooling around with a ouija board! There’s nothing quit like the shivers kids can give each other when they’re 12, is there? But a case of the shivers doesn’t usually result in death. Heather and Becca’s ritual ended with Becca’s death, while wearing her half of the friendship necklace.

When, almost 30 years later, Heather opens an envelope and Becca’s necklace falls out, the real story begins. The real mystery begins. More things from Heather’s time with Becca show up, and Heather starts believing someone is watching her. Stalking her. Do they want revenge? Justice? What? Heather’s life begins to unravel, and I began to wonder if Heather is truly losing her mind from remembering painful things…from the guilt.

I loved every page of this book. The ending was great, scary and enlightening. I could visualize this story as a movie, and I knew every place where a much younger me would have shrieked in terror. Ms. Walters, you entertained the hell out of me! Thank you!


ARC graciously provided by Crooked Lane Books and NetGaLey

Normally I do not read paranormal novels. This was different enough to make the reading palatable. Heather is a child psychologist with a secret. When she was a child, she, her best friend Becca and two other girlfriends formed the dead girls club. They would normally read paranormal and crime novels featuring female victims and discuss them. Then Becca began telling her stories of The Red Lady, a witchlike creature who would do ‘favors’ for people for a price, who was allegedly killed by the townsfolk by burying her alive. Later all the people who participated were found, one by one, dead with dirt in their mouths and ears, and The Red Lady’s grave was found open and empty. The stories were obviously disturbing and caused a breach between Heather and Becca. The novel was written as a chapter for Heather today followed by a chapter from her childhood. I will not go further into the plot because of spoilers but promise that anyone interested in the paranormal genre will be fascinated. Thanks to Net Galley and Crooked Lane Books for an ARC for an honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this twisted, psychological thriller. The setting jumped back and forth between the main character's present and her childhood, but this only added to the story.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
As young girls on the brink of adolescence, Heather and her friends bond over their mutual obsession with serial killers and the urban legend known as “The Red Lady”. The four girls, who now call themselves “The Dead Girls Club”, share stories and try and summon “The Red Lady”, a vengeful spirit who was, supposedly, brutally murdered centuries before. Heather knows that these are just stories, but her best friend Becca soon becomes obsessed, convinced the stories are real and that The Red Lady has made contact with her. Becca sets out to prove that the Red Lady is real- and ends up dead.
Years later, Heather is a child psychologist, helping troubled children overcome their demons. When she starts to receive cryptic messages in the mail she initially brushes it off. But when the messages become more macabre, and she starts being followed, Heather begins to wonder if somehow, somewhere, there is someone who knows Heather’s secret- that Becca is dead because of her.
Damien Angelica Walters has several award-winning short stories under her belt, stories acclaimed for being “weird” and “gothic”. “The Dead Girls Club” is set to be released in December 2019.
“The Dead Girls Club” is formed as a result of four close friends who share an obsession and meet to perform séances and tell stories. As a pre-adolescent girl, I was always forming “clubs” and “secret groups” with my friends, desperate to have something we could share with just us, away from the outside world (too bad I didn’t have friends obsessed with serial killers. I would’ve been ALL OVER a “Dead Girls Club” of my own). That part of the novel is relatable and charming, as the friendships are challenged by angst-ridden problems and hormones, typical of any female group of outsiders.
The story alternates between THEN and NOW, each chapter narrated by Heather as a young girl and as an adult. The secrets of the novel are slowly revealed, with just enough suspense in each chapter to keep you hooked.
When the ending is revealed, and the truth comes out, I was slightly disappointed. The twist has been done before, in movies and books both, and it was almost unbelievable and far-fetched. That being said, there was a definitive ending which provided answers to questions that form throughout the novel. I questioned the behaviours and actions of “Adult Heather” a few times, as she seemed to sabotage her adult life and relationships more than she needed to, all to hide a childhood secret.
“The Dead Girls Club” is definitely unique and creative, with relatable characters. Walters definitely has a thing for the macabre (which I appreciate, of course) and this novel is well written, compete with a spooky abandoned house and a mysterious could-be-true urban legend. Definitely worth checking out for those who are looking for a nostalgic, gothic read.

Wow! Every year, I look for that one ultimate horror summer read and I don't find it very often. This book is exactly what I was looking for.

A nice mix of mystery and suspense mixed in with the supernatural. The story had me hooked from the start. This is the kind of book you'll think about while you're at work - you'll count the minutes until you can get back home to pick it up and read some more. At night, you'll scan ahead to see if you can read a little bit more before going to bed, and once you read to the next stop, you'll scan again to see if you can read just a little bit more.

The ending made for a very satisfying read. I wish there were more books like this.

Who remembers playing with the ouija board as a child, telling ghost stories at sleepovers or camping, saying bloody mary in the mirror three times while waiting for a ghost to appear? Becca, Heather, Gia and Rachel have made up their own club called The Dead Girls Club when they were 12 and 13. They meet in the basement of an empty house and tell ghost stories, mainly about The Red Lady, who Becca seems overly obsessed with. The girls convince themselves that the Red Lady is real and is visiting them in their dreams and will help them. Becca and Heather are best friends and have the matching necklaces to prove it. But, something goes wrong and Heather kills Becca unintentionally and Becca’s mom Lauren is charged with the murder. The rest of the girls go their separate ways and are no longer friends.
Heather is a child psychologist trying to make amends for what she did as a child but someone won’t let her forget. Heather receives a charm necklace in the mail. the same one that was on Becca’s neck the night she died. Heather is now convinced that she wasn’t alone that night and someone is stalking her. She hunts down Gia and Rachel, her former friends and Lauren, who was recently released from prison as she believes that one of them must
be the one that sent her the necklace.
What really happened that night and who knows the truth?

The Dead Girls Club follows protagonist Heather. In the past she and her best friend Becca and two other friends made up The Dead Girls Club. I liked that the four childhood friends would share ghost stories, play bloody Mary, and try and scare each other. I felt like those moments are relatable on some level to all girl childhood friendships. This added to the story by making the characters in their past forms feel real. At some point Becca shares a story of The Red Lady. The girls start to perform rituals and begin believing that the red lady is bringing things on them. It goes to far and ends in tragedy. Becca is dead and her mother Lauren is found guilty of Becca's murder. Now in the future Heather receives a package with Becca's best friend necklace, the same necklace that was around Becca's neck when Heather killed her. Heather unravels to find out who knows the truth about what really happened to Becca that night. I found myself enjoying the parts that were written in the past. The characters felt more nuanced. When I was reading Heather's life in the future, it felt like her character was not deep enough to feel believable. Overall, a decent read.

I really enjoyed The Dead Girls Club. It was exciting and kept me interested the entire way through. The only thing that I really didn't like about the book is that it never stated if the red lady was real or not. I know it was probably meant to leave it to our imagination, but it's one of those things where I really just want to know. Overall, the book was great and very well paced. I will definitely be reading this book again!

Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters, coming December 2019, is a supernatural thriller starring protagonist Heather Cole. If you like spooky, creepy, suspense  - this one is for you. 
Let me address the style of this writing, which by far and away won't appeal to every reader, but will be an absolute delight to those who like an "in the mind" stream of consciousness flow. This story feels entirely inside of Heather's head, and as the narrator you either learn to trust her - or not.  Not to get too psychological here, but you know how the truth has three sides? yours, theirs, and the actual truth? Well, with Heather we are sure  to at least to get one good side. 
In terms of plot, Heather has kept a really dark secret for nearly 30 years, and suddenly now with the arrival of a little silver BFF necklace, that secret threatens to destroy the life she built for herself. As I read, I kept thinking - this is very much a concept of, "I know what you did last summer." But, I promise that is where the similarities end. This story has its own plot, pace, and conclusion which has nothing to do with masked boogie men. 
When Heather receives afore mentioned necklace in the mail; a necklace she hasn't seen since the night she killed her best friend Becca, she comes to the conclusion that someone else knows about that night, and that someone is probably out to get her her. Logically, that is a super sound conclusion, and my recommendation to Heather is immigration. I hear Finland is nice. 
I won't go into any spoilers since the books isn't even published, but highly recommend for a cozy fall/winter read with a nice blanket and glass of red. This book story has much more to offer than a mere ghost of two, not that that's a bad thing either. Enjoy book worms. 
Dead Girls Club, by Damien Angelica Walters - published December 2019 wherever books are sold. 


Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for the ARC and to Netgalley #partner

A complicated plot with a few unexpected twists.
The story is haunting and scary, the unraveling of a mystery that lay dormant for decades and that could cost everything to our main character.
The Dead Girls club starts as a rendering for all the lives lost by the senseless actions of serial killers. The fascination with the macabre that plagues the life of young Becca, and the love for mystery and horror that her best friend Heather has.
How to discern fact from fiction when you are an impressionable teen.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Crooked Lane books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fairly enjoyable and quick read. I wanted to find out what happened and it kept me reading. The characters were all very relatable and the girls reminded me of myself as a teenager. The story follows a few of the girls through time to explain what happened to Becca, the friend that died when they were young. Suddenly Heather is getting reminders of Becca as an adult and has no idea what is going on.

This kept me guessing! Great read.

Something with the writing style was off for me. I didnt like how loose the plot was. The main character had a weird fascination with gory death and reading horror stories. When the main character, early on is introduced as a psych doctor I was sort of shocked. Pretty disappointed

The Dead Girls Club was exactly the page-turner I needed right now. It was well paced, suspenseful, and just twisty enough to keep me engaged in the story. It had well rounded characters and an entertaining plot... everything I wanted from a thriller.

What a fantastic book. Really got into this one. Characters are well formed and the storyline keeps you focused. Wish I could have read it in one sitting but really enjoyed it

“Ghost girls” travels back and forth in time between now and the late early 90s when Heather Cole and her 3 friends were obsessed with ghost stories, breaking into empty houses, and summoning spirits... like the one of the Red Lady. One of those friends is brutally murdered at the hand of the Red Lady. Adult Heather has to answer for it when the past returns.

This story scared me, and had me sneaking away to read more. I, too, am a child of the early nineties and I loves the nostalgic feel. Reminded me of Bloody Mary, and made THAT story feel a little too real.

The ending came on strong, and left me satisfied, though a little sad. Scary, but not too scary. Not all questions are answered — which is a good thing!

The Dead Girls Club, by Damien Angelica Waters, is a supernatural thriller that hits shelves December 10th, 2019. The Dead Girls Club follows Heather, who kicks things off the story by receiving a mysterious envelope which contains one half of one of those super-popular-in-the-90s “best friends forever” broken heart necklaces. The problem is, it’s her best friend’s half, and the last time Heather saw it was the day she killed her BFF back when they were twelve.
We then spend the rest of the book along for the ride as she gets more and more mysterious clues sent to her and dissolves into more and more of a panic trying to figure out who knows her secrets and why they’re coming after her now. We also intermittently flash back to her childhood to unravel the mystery of how and why she ended up killing her own best friend, getting a closer look at our titular friend group nicknamed “The Dead Girls Club”—AKA a group of preteens obsessed with serial killers, murders, and ghost stories.
So, the usual.
Two things really caught my attention and drew me into this book: the overall synopsis, of course, and more notably because it was billed as being similar to A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Two which I have just one thing to say:
NAH.
Nah, girl. Not at all. It seems like publishing companies these days are always overselling things with these bold-faced lies in the form of “comparisons”. (Like every YA fantasy is the “new Harry Potter”, amiright?)
I absolutely loved A Head Full of Ghosts and thought it was really well written, unique, and interesting. I felt…differently about this The Dead Girls Club.
My overall feelings about this book were kind of just…meh. Very middle of the road. It had some cons, it had a couple pros, and nothing really tipped it in either direction for me. The plot is nothing really groundbreaking. It’s a concept we’ve seen plenty of times before in everything from cheesy Lifetime movies to Pretty Little Liars to I Know What You Did Last Summer. (In fact, with the group of four female friends, one dead girl, and the past mysteriously creeping back up, I actually got some major PLL vibes from this, but maybe that’s just me. In the early days of that show, my best friend and I would have weekly “TV dates” to watch the new episodes and scream about how they didn’t make any sense, so perhaps it’s just stuck in my head.)
I started off on the wrong foot with this book, because I really didn’t like the writing at the beginning. We kick things off quickly with Heather getting the envelope containing Becca’s necklace (Becca being the dead best friend) right away, but then things progress so quickly that it doesn’t really have a natural, readable flow and takes on more of an “and then, and then, and then” quality. Then I went home, then I made dinner, then I showered, then I went to bed. IT was really clunky and I didn’t enjoy the writing at all for the first few chapters. This is a little snippet of the MC/narrator talking about her husband:
“…Our first date. A coffee shop. Him with an espresso, me with a latte. Almond biscotti and blueberry scones. Knuckles brushing together. Knees nudging under the table. Ten minutes in, wanting a second date. Hoping he did, too.”
Gah. I just don’t like it. It all felt rushed and felt like the author just wanted to really quickly dump a lot of obligatory background info on me and then move on, instead of working things into the story more naturally as we went or actually just building up this character and her life. Like, “Yeah, yeah, here’s some background, who cares what this character’s life is like, all I really want to talk about is murder.”
Also—and I’ll warn you, this is probably nitpicky—but she also overuses a writing convention which is one of my pet peeves, and that’s when people describe people or things by saying “all” and then making a list of a couple of random qualities. Like these two examples from the book:
“All long hair, cleft chin, and lean muscles.”
“All dirty blonde hair, narrow hips, and American Eagle jeans.”
I don’t know, something about this particular turn of phrase just bugs the ever living hell out of me. Maybe it’s because the use of “all” implies that the three things you just listed are the three things you think are significant about this character—hair, hips, jeans. That is all they are reduced to. Or maybe it comes across as lazy. Either way, I’ve always thought that if you’re going to use this in your writing, you should use it once; but this author used it over and over again (more than just the two noted here) and just…meh. I got really tired of it.
Another thing that bothered me was Heather’s job and how this was represented. She’s supposed to be a child psychologist, but the way it’s written is more like a very basic shell of what it sort of seems like a child psychologist might do. Since she seems to spend most of her time at work screwing around and researching people from her past in an attempt to catch whoever is harassing her, the only sessions we see—other than a group session where Heather is so bad at her job that she tunes out while one girl beats the shit out of another one—are these brief glimpses of sessions with a little girl named Cassidy, who talks about her life in terms of “princess stories”, and the whole thing just seems so stereotypical and generic and Heather only achieves basically tuning the girl out (this seems to be a pattern), slamming drawers loudly enough to startle a child who clearly already has some major trauma, and then sending her to the corner to color. It didn’t make her any more likable or relatable as a character (at some points I wondered if the author was even doing the whole Girl on the Train/Gone Girl unlikable main character schtick, but it wasn’t done well enough for me to be able to tell if it she was intentionally unlikable or somewhat lazy writing just made her seem that way) and it felt more like filler than anything.
The only other purpose it served was to have the same little girl find a drawing from Heather’s childhood which had been anonymously mailed to her by her torturer. (Which she found when Heather literally left the session to get some notes on a totally different patient from her receptionist, after actually taking a call during the appointment, as well. So professional. Can someone get this little girl a new therapist, please?) After finding the drawing, Cassidy makes some comments on it which are supposedly so enlightening for Heather and serve to illustrate how kids think so much differently than adults about “monsters” or things coming to get us—but it still just kind of feels like a cheap shot to further Heather’s mystery and not really build character or her world by showing us what she does for a living. The whole thing only resulted in freaking the little girl out even more, in the midst of her therapist TOTALLY NOT LISTENING TO HER about how she is clearly being abused by her stepfather.
Okay, I need to chill.
The good news is, the book does redeem itself once we get more into the meat of it—the murder of her best friend, the bad things that happened when they were kids, their ghost stories they used to tell, Heather trying to hunt down who is sending her the items from her past. Once we get into it, that quick pacing actually starts working well for it and we get to move along through the story and try to solve the mystery along with Heather. I thought it was a pretty interesting story about the girls when they were young, kind of bringing to the page the vibe of modern day news stories where kids stab their friends in the name of Slenderman (a case which Heather actually references more than once) or something else fictional. It also brings to mind the debate about the power of the human mind and manifestation—whether we really do possess the power to think things into being, and if we believe them enough, are they real?
Additionally, there are some very real, very heart wrenching portrayals of how mean young girls can be to one another, which successfully ratchet up the tension and actually make you feel for the young versions of the characters (I liked kid Heather a lot better than adult Heather).
There were also a few really adrenaline-heightening moments as Heather sneaks around playing detective, like when she breaks into a friend’s office and gets busted by the receptionist, or when she’s confronted by the head of a Neighborhood Watch program while she’s creeping around a suburb. These moments largely come from Heather just doing reckless and dumb things, but there were certainly a few moments where I was thinking, well now what are you going to do? So it is some what interesting to follow as she tries—often unsuccessfully—to sort things out on her own without the help of law enforcement.
I didn’t love the ending, but it also didn’t quite go where I thought it was going, so I guess I have to give it that. I just didn’t think it was that great of an ending. Once again, just kind of meh.
Rating wise, I’d give this 2 ½ or 3 stars. Probably 2 ½ because it would be right in the middle of the road which is all too accurate to how I felt about this. Again, I didn’t dislike it. I just didn’t like it all that much. I found it kind of enjoyable, sort of something to pass the time, but also kind of forgettable. It would make a quick read if you’re just looking for something murder-y to kill time with. By no means do I think it warrants the comparison to A Head Full of Ghosts, and isn’t nearly as successful at blurring the lines between the supernatural and the thriller elements. The fact that there’s a ghost story involved with both and it alternates between adult versions and childhood versions of the main characters are really the only things the two have in common, in my opinion. Writing-wise, they are by no means equivalent.
But this book releases on December 10th, so if you want something to breeze through and pass the time while you’re snowed in and you feel like solving a sort of cheesy, Lifetime-movie-esque mystery, then it may be worth checking out. Or pick it up as a holiday gift for your murder mystery loving aunt who needs to break out of her James Patterson/Lee Child/Dean Koontz shell. Perhaps you’ll find it much less meh than I did. I definitely think fans of Pretty Little Liars or similar franchises would find this right up their alley!

So detailed and amazing. I finished it in one sitting. Amazing attention to detail. Love, love, love this story and the characters.