Interesting thriller. It was definitely one of a kind. This would be a perfect Halloween read. Head full of ghosts, scary stories and keeping you up all night kind of thriller. :)

This book wasn't for me. I'm usually really into supernatural aspects in books but this one just fell flat. It was really predictable and even though I was initially drawn in, the plot didn't develop much past the beginning. I slogged through this book instead of reading it in my usual 1 book/week pace. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book but maybe you'll have a different/better experience than I did!

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. A full review will be posted on Amazon and Goodreads

This was a good thriller book! Loved the plot and the characters from the beginning! It was very much a page turner and kept my attention!

I'm not usually into thrillers but this one compelled me, and though I didn't necessarily care for Heather all the way through, I quite loved her as a child. The 2 story lines really made this book, and it truly felt like there would be a red lady who appeared at the end.

What an amazing book. This really had me sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was scared, shocked and excited throughout this whole book. I am a fan of Walters now.

I received this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I actually got scared while reading this book. It was so well written and the story just draws you in. I flew through it and read it one day. I highly recommend this book if you like scary stories.

I really enjoyed this book. There were times when I just couldn't stop reading. I had to know what was going to happen next! I feel that the author did a good job of capturing the girls' friendship and the "belief" in the mythos that was created for the Red Lady. I'm not entirely sure about the ending (parts of it didn't feel like they had been included in the plot before but we are also dealing with someone who went through a traumatic experience as a child). But I do appreciate that everything was not forgiven, and I can see where Heather's mom was coming from in her decisions. Overall, I would recommend this book to other readers.

As hard as I tried to get into this book I just couldn't. I keep picking it up and putting it back down. Unfortunately I'll have to put this book down as a DNF as it just couldn't grab me enough to pull me in to continue.

If you love witchy, supernatural books this book is for you. I didn’t connect with the characters or story. This story wasn’t for me, it just missed the mark.

This was definitely a spooky thriller! I wasn’t a fan of the main character, Heather whatsoever!. She got away with the murder of her childhood friend thirty years ago and now it seems that someone knows she did it. The story goes back and forth between then and now building the suspense. I like the idea of the story, I just wasn’t a huge fan of the characters and to be honest it was probably a bit on the scary side for me.
Thank you to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the chance to read this review copy.

I really loved this book!! Kept me on edge the whole time!!! I liked how they switched from past to present and could understand if it was then or now.

The Dead Girls Club (Damien Angelica Walters)
Crooked Lane Books

In this psychological-suspense, Walters brings to life 4 pre-teen friends (Becca, Heather, Gia, Rachel) who share a love of true crime and murder mysteries and as such form a morbidly-monikered, “Dead Girls Club,” where they, for the most part, share stories and books about true crime they’ve read or followed. Becca, the seeming ringleader of the group, begins sharing the a long and (obviously) well-thought out story of “The Red Lady” at each club meeting. The thing is, for Becca, she’s not just a story, she is real. And as Walters dives deeper into Becca’s rough and difficult childhood, we begin to see why Becca needs to create this escapist universe.

The story is narrated by her (still-alive) BFF, Heather, now as an adult and practicing child psychologist, in “Now” and “Then” chapters. We find Heather struggling to deal with her guilt over what happened to Becca when they were kids as she starts taking extreme measures to cope with the situation on her own. It’s clear she’s not managing it well and those closest to her start to become worried (rightfully so). Like other characters I’ve encountered in thriller/psych-suspense, we see the cracks in veneer of the MC and are led to wonder— is all of this actually happening? Or is it the result of an overly active/sociopathic imagination? ((To be fair, I recently finished a psych-thriller where the reveal was that the MC actually suffered from multiple personality disorder—so she was both characters…. so I started wondering if that was possibly going on with Heather too))

Admittedly, there were a few times - about midway through - I thought I had it figured out: I thought I knew who killed Becca and who was currently messing with Heather. And that’s what kept me reading and following the breadcrumb trail Walters weaves for us. I did not predict the final twist at the end (no spoilers here)—so was very pleasantly surprised.

While I found some parts to drag a bit - particularly the middle section when we see example after example of Heather unraveling both internally and blowing up her life - I’m glad that I kept with it.

3 solid stars for me. I found the writing and originality of the plot to be solid (although, like other readers, I liked the “Then” chapters a bit more than the “Now” chapters), sufficient character development for Becca and Heather, and no glaring editing issues. I would certainly seek out additional work from this author - I’d like to see if she attempts another genre (i.e., not another thriller/suspense).

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an ARC of this novel!

This book definitely freaked me out a little when I was reading it. I liked that the timeline sort of went back and forth to explain what happened. I felt like some of the characters came off a little flat but all in all they were okay characters. The plot kept itself going without stalling, and it was a quick read.

I was given an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own.


I'll be honest, the cover is what drew me to this book in the beginning. I love the color scheme and the flowers. It looks like something I would use as my phone background. And of course the title is catchy as well.

The story is about Heather, who as a child, had a group of friends who called themselves the "dead girl's club" where they essentially had their own true crime podcast before podcasts were a thing. One of their favorite topics, the Red Lady, (think Slenderman) was a belief that got too out of hand, and because of it their friend Becca died. The story goes back and forth between what happened the night Becca died, and who is stalking Hannah about it now.

The whole time I was reading this I was reminded of the case in Wisconsin about the girls who stabbed their friend because "Slenderman" told them to do it. Frankly I didn't believe their story then, and I wasn't too taken with Hannah's story either. There's no way that at her age she honestly thought that she could stab her friend and put dirt in her mouth and that she would "come back". However, those feelings don't necessarily reflect on the book. I thought it was interesting, it held my attention, and I would definitely recommend it to my true crime readers.

I’m a total sucker for the macabre so this book instantly spoke to me. It took me forever to read this and (finally) review so sorry about that Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books! My bad!

I felt this was more thriller than supernatural thriller (which was a bit of a bummer for me) but was overall an entertaining read. Not great but not bad.

I got this as an arc from Netgalley ages ago, so thank you to the publisher! (and sorry it took so long to review). 2.5 stars, the premise is fun to think about, less fun to read about.

Who doesn't love a creepy twisty book like this? I don't want to share any spoilers, so I will leave it at how much I enjoyed the plot and the atmosphere.

The dead girls club- a group of preteen girls enjoy the more macabre things in life. Manson, Bundy and lots of stephen king novels. They create a club where they can discuss all the darker and gory stories, and find the perfect place to tell these tales, a vacant house down the street. Becca and Heather are Best Friends Forever of the group, and believe that nothing will ever break their friendship. Flash forward to adulthood and they are all no longer friends, a terrible incident tearing them all apart. How did Becca die on that fateful night in the abandoned house? Why can't heather remember what happened? Heather is in her thirties and is now a child psychologist with her own practice, but her past still haunts her and trying to remember what exactly happened to Becca. And strange things keep happening to her...... is Becca still alive? Does someone know what she did 15 years ago?Overall this was a really interesting read, i would definitely read more from this author!

In the infancy of the internet, getting an email was a novel experience. These days, when emails seem to flood in by the second, the reverse is true. Receiving a piece of correspondence signed, sealed, and delivered by the postal system feels like the most thrilling part of the day. That is unless that coveted piece of snail mail contains only a trinket that once belonged to friend who was killed nearly three decades prior.

Though she may wish to return the creepy parcel to sender, Heather Cole, child psychologist and leading lady of “The Dead Girls Club,” the new thriller from Damien Angelica Walters, instead falls down a proverbial rabbit hole of haunting memories. The only thing keeping her mentally present is the current threat she knows she now faces. That’s because Heather knows for certain that the necklace — one half of a best friends heart — couldn’t have been sent by its original owner. How does she know this? Because Heather killed the girl herself, upon request. Whoever sent this necklace not only knows what she’s done, but must have been there the night that she did it.

Flashback scenes take us back to Baltimore in 1991 when Heather and her group of friends meet in a vacant house late at night to sate their spooky preteen fascinations with tales of murders and monsters. In these sessions, the necklace owner, Becca, begins to get increasingly pushy about her ghost of choice, insisting to the other girls that her beloved Red Lady is no story, but a presence in the room with them. Shackled to a rough home situation, Becca seems to need this spirit to be real as she craves help the living don’t seem willing to provide.

Heather, in the present day sections, makes no secret that her history with Becca, from the sisterly closeness in the beginning, through the teenage spats in between, to the eventual guilt over Becca’s tragic end by her own hands, drove her as an adult to a career within child psychology; in many ways, her choice of work seems to be scratching a deeply rooted psychological itch to save other children where she couldn’t save Becca, even from herself. Her constantly present, aching remorse has the power to force the reader to question their own allegiance: Are we really empathizing with the character we’ve known has been the killer since the first chapter?

Such an internally conflicted reading experience nicely suits the book’s tone. Though the meat of the book is the search for the identity of this long-dormant witness, the true reckoning is within Heather’s mind. Lulled into a 20-plus year sense that the threat has passed, in an instant she is transported back to the worst day of her life. The looming threat of being exposed as a killer shakes her foundation.

“The Dead Girls Club” is especially eerie thanks to the exposure of the threatening within the doldrums of suburban normalcy. Heather’s hunt for this mysterious witness turns sinister. Heather’s breakdown gives the reader the scary sense that a descent into desperation may not be as self-evident as one would like to think.

Stepping into Heather’s shoes for the duration of this book is to associate with an admitted killer, but she’s not the dead-eyed type of sociopath one may expect or crave. In Heather’s narrative, readers will recognize enough of their own challenges within marriages and careers yet will feel their own desperation to uncover the real story behind her teenage crime. In “The Dead Girls Club,” Walters has written a modern tale destined to pull thriller lovers through cold winter nights. Although, it must be said, those same readers will likely never look at their mailboxes the same way again.