This book started out strong. But somewhere along the halfway mark it started to sizzle. Somehow, the book went from being about a murder mystery to dwelling in teenage angst. I could forgive the angst if it were crucial to the plot, however, it felt more like filler. Cassidy is the sole survivor of a fire she started when she was little, ever since that day she has been tormented and bullied and dubbed Fire Girl by her peers. One of her biggest tormentors is Melody Davenport, a girl she’d love to see drop dead. And drop-dead she does right after Cass executes the most brilliant murder and shares her step by step guide with her brother’s best friend, Brandon. Now, the murderer knows of her desire to kill Melody and has proof (her notebook). The murderer threatens to spill everything if she doesn’t comply with his needs, mostly to not disclose this info with anyone else or grave consequences will follow.

My only issue is that there was minimal sleuthing being done for this being a murder mystery and even when Cass disclosed the whole truth to her best friend, there were no repercussions! So why was there even a threat made if nothing was going to come of it?

Now, none of the teenage angst would’ve annoyed me if I actually LIKED the protagonist. But Cassidy isn’t your usual unlikeable unreliable narrator, meaning that she’s not mean and charming, but rather just a big whiner and being bullied but then goes and spreads rumors about SOMEONE else and she pretty much treats anyone close to her like shit too. She really had no redeeming qualities nor was she witty or clever that I could overlook her not having any redeeming qualities. There’s a fine line between being Patrick Bateman charming and just falling into the terrible person with a blah personality box, and Cassidy falls into that.

So why did I continue to read despite all the negatives? Well, the author DID manage to keep me hooked on the premise of Who Killed Melody Davenport? I was curious to see if my hunch was right about a certain character or not (I was right).

I KNOW THIS IS A DEBUT NOVEL AND THERE’S ROOM FOR THE AUTHOR TO GROW, AND I DO THINK THAT THE AUTHOR HAS PROMISE, SO I WON’T WRITE THIS BOOK OFF ENTIRELY. THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF YOU LIKE SLOW BURN THRILLERS WITH A PROTAGONIST WITH A TRAUMATIC PAST.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Interesting YA story about a mysterious murder that take place and no one seems to know who did it. Cass heard her archenemy Melody asking for help before she got killed. But she can't just go to the police since a few weeks before, as a joke, she wrote in a notebook how she could kill her. And to makes matter worse, her notebook is missing. She then makes her mission in life to try to find her notebook and who killed Melody - and for that she keeps trying to remember who could possibly have had access to her notebook. It's kind of one of those YA books where things magically happen - like, it's a school day, but she manages to enter the house of a boy and go through his drawers, and things like that - but it's an interesting reading nonetheless.

I found this thriller to be compulsively readable, which is what I'm always looking for when I pick up a thriller. It also totally did that (rare) thing where it had me questioning and suspecting EVERYONE. It reminded me of TWO CAN KEEP A SECRET in that way. The tension was deliciously taut as I could see the mystery going in any number of ways, and also couldn't quite figure out how it would unravel, until it did, in its very satisfying conclusion. There was a fair amount of relationship drama woven into the mystery, too, so teens who are looking for that will be happy. The characters are likable and well-drawn, the voice strong and engaging. Overall, this was a compelling and satisfying read--with an unsettling edge.

Review posted at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3356532542
Review will be posted at Amazon after pub date

I'm not going to lie, I struggled to get through this one. I don't really have a problem with unreliable or unlikable narrators but when they whine all throughout and are constantly seeing everything through their self serving pity-me glasses, that's where I tend to draw the line. I've LOVED books with a narratives from villains, from characters I didn't like one bit. I wish this could have been the case here but it just wasn't. The plot could have at least helped the story along but honestly I found it to also be lacking.

To me it was kinda like everything was rather one dimensional, the characters, the plot, and the mystery. The synopsis offered things I don't think the story ever delivered on. The big reveal at the end felt somehow predictable and easy, which was WEIRD because the one thing I can think of that I guess you could say is positive is that I didn't figure it out till right before. But once it was revealed it felt like OF COURSE and only because no one should guess that for any other reason than it would seem the least likely and you were just supposed to accept it in the end for nothing more than because sometimes people are just evil or crazy or whatever. It felt very simplified. Give me a breadcrumb or two along the way. I love to be surprised don't get me wrong, but it cheapens it to me when you did nothing along the way to give even miniscule clues or make it understandable how you got there or why things ended this way until literally right before, and even that is shakey at best. Maybe the fact that I'm reading such an emotionally complex grand series as well right now didn't help.

This just felt incredibly immature and unsatisfying to me. If major teen angst is your bag, or maybe you want to dip a toe in a light mystery, you might enjoy this one. To be honest I felt like the Scooby-Doo gang solved more indepth cases, but to each his own.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc.

I hate to say that I didn't finish it. I got the twist early in the book and lost interest.

What a twisty story this is! An excellent read that will take you into a journey you'd think you have figured out until you realize you don't. A difficult one to put down.

This one was weird. The twist was lacking and the main character just didn't learn. I wanted to love it as it was well paced and thriller with a mystery but sadly it just didn't work out at all.

Interesting premise. I enjoyed the characters and twists. This was my first foray into YA thrillers, and it was enjoyable.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy.

This novel was a good, relatively quick read about revenge, high school drama, and murder. And had a totally unanticipated twist ending that leaves readers shocked while putting all of the pieces together. When Cassidy was a child she was blamed for the death of her friend in a freak fire accident while playing, although her memory of the accident is unclear. Fast forward to high school, where a girl Cassidy goes to school with, Melody, goes missing. Cassidy feels as though she needs to help figure out what happened, and along her journey with her best friend Gideon, attempts to uncover all the mysteries of Melody’s disappearance. While doing so, she receives texts from an unknown number telling her to be quiet or more people will go missing. Now the pressure is on to figure out what happened to Melody, all while attempting to keep herself, her family, and Gideon safe from the unknown killer.
This was a solid read, and I enjoyed it. Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

It was the cover art and title that drew me to this one, before I realized that it was a young adult novel. That's one of the drawbacks of ebooks -- sometimes it's easy to expect the wrong thing.



Cassidy Pratt accidentally started a fire in her playhouse when she was a young child, killing her best friend. It wasn't her fault, but a decade later her classmates will never let her forget that she's "the fire girl." She's not really a killer. That detailed murder plan she wrote in her silver spiral bound notebook was just a joke...except someone seems to have followed it and the notebook is missing. Cassidy is afraid to go to the police with what she knows so she tries to find the killer on her own.



I didn't love this one. That cover and title had me expecting something much darker. It's not a bad book, just a kind of run-of-the-mill YA thriller that will probably appeal to a younger audience.

Creepy enough to keep my interest, although it’s a YA book and I’m way passed YA age!
A lot of YA thrillers have been pretty mediocre lately for me, and although this slightly lagged in the middle it was a strong start and very good climax. The characters were relatable, old and young could experience any of what goes on.
Love the cover, Who doesn't love a creepy doll!

For fans of unreliable narrators, Little Creeping Things will keep you guessing at each twist and turn. When Cassidy was only a child, she was involved a deadly fire that took the life of her best friend. Traumatized from the experience, her memories of the event are spotty at best but the event is never far from her mind. It doesn't help that her fellow classmates have never let her live the tragedy down.
When a classmate goes missing, Cassidy thinks she knows who kidnapped Melody but can't go to the police. After one too many drinks at a party, Cassidy confided in a friend about how easy it would be to kill Melody and get away with it. Not only did they plan out the murder, they wrote it down. In a notebook that is now missing. Also, Melody is the cousin of the young girl who died in the fire. Cassidy never meant for anything bad to happen to Melody, but now she can't feel responsible for what has happened.
It's all very complicated.
As Cassidy investigates Melody's disappearance, her world begins to spin out of control. Trying to protect others causes her to push away those most important to her and places them in even more danger. Along the way, Cassidy will discover who her true friends are and who she should have feared all along.
This is a fast paced, gripping story that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire book. Every single action by Cassidy seemed suspect, but there was also always a logical reason for her behavior. Every time I thought I knew who the bad guy was, something changed my mind and I was completely surprised at the ending. The traumatic fire Cassidy survived haunts every day and impacts nearly every action she takes. I can't imagine who difficult it must have been for her being taunted every day by the victim's family and not being able to do anything about it. Cassidy also never trusts herself. She doesn't trust her actions, her decisions, her memories, and her impulsive behavior always makes her seem guilty. Cassidy is a darkly complicated character that really drove the story.


Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

In a word, this was...addictive. I flew through it and kind of didn't realise I'd read for an hour and half the book was gone already?! The writing is easy to be absorbed in and it felt easy to fall into rhythm with Cassidy Pratt's voice. I'm a big contemporary lover and it had a lot of normal contemporary aspects (highschool! cute best friend crushes! sibling relationships! let's get milkshakes and plan murder!...okay maybe not the last one but still). Plus it, of course, had a murder mystery that Cassidy feels compelled to play detective for. Why?

Because 1) she might have heard the victim's last moments and been too afraid to speak out.
And 2) she might have accidentally planned the murder.

Thrilling And Chilling
The mystery had so many red herrings and left a complicated knot of clues to untangled. The suspect options were kind of slim though, so I admit I guessed right a few chapters in. But then I had to get to the end and see if I was right, so I don't think the predictability lessened the enjoyment. Cassidy losing her mind and freaking out as the mystery and clues got worse, the threats started, and her own flashbacks from her traumatic past messed with her, all made the story super compelling.

Little Bit o' Romance Too
Like, okay, but I am a sucker for best-friends-to-lovers romance and ahhh I really didn't know if this would work out! Gideon has always been there for Cas, but then she starts lying and he can't take it. He is the softest™ and I really adored him.

There's also unlikely friendships, Cas has a close relationship with her older brother Asher, and there's a few maybe-crushes who turn out to be maybe-villains.

Small Town Drama
It has the small-town setting with slack cops. Forests and gossipy highschools. Tight knit communities and whispering and pointed fingers. I really love this kind of setting!

Is Little Creeping Things a little creepy?
yessss. I do recommend this one! It's also a good gateway book if you haven't read many YA thrillers, because it's intense but it also has everyday quiet moments and great friendships.

Stopped at 30% and skipped to the last two chapters.

I didn't really care for the main character or the writing style to read the whole thing through. While I didn't enjoy the book, I'm sure others will.

I love mystery novels, and my favourite kinds to read are those that have me acting like an over-excited newbie detective pricking up my ears at the sight of every new character I come across. Is it you? I ask, narrowing my eyes. What about you? Or could it be you? You're suspicious, so it's definitely you... wait, no, I'm sure it's you! Ichaso delivers that experience by the bucketful in Little Creeping Things, her debut novel (believe it or not); I caught myself doubting everybody and was even utterly convinced that one in particular was the culprit -- only to find myself taken by complete surprise at the end.

I've been an avid watcher of true crime programmes from early childhood, and I've always been the kind of person who confidently (and correctly) declares, "the husband/wife/neighbour did it" at the start of the episode, but here, I was proved wrong! Sometimes, it's fun to read a thriller and guess who's responsible from the beginning -- and then follow along as, piece by piece, you're proved right -- but it's often even more fun to let the author take you wherever they please, feeding you clues here, misleading you there.

Our narrator, Cassidy, has been ostracised at school and in daily life since childhood, a result of emerging as the only survivor -- and alleged instigator -- of a fire that killed her young neighbour. She's an unreliable narrator yet still sympathetic, and this was another real strong point of the novel. When faced with a mystery, it's natural to want to believe whatever the main character tells you given that they're the lens through which you see their world. At the same time, by having Cassidy behave in a very 'the ends justify the means' manner at times, Ichaso plants enough tiny seeds of doubt to make the reader question her, too -- proving the novel's message that there's always more to people than what lies on the surface.

Without giving anything away (because unravelling the who, the why, and the how is the most fun part!), I would have liked to have seen more reasoning behind the killer's behaviour, and more of an explanation as to how they were able to mask their true personality for so long without faltering. Even so, this was such a fun, compelling read, one that has made me cast doubt upon my armchair detective skills!

I wish I could show you my face at the end of this book when I read about the author. I fully expected to read about some young, over-achieving teenager. The author is married with two kids! My mouth literally dropped open.
I selected this book for two reasons. Sweet Ashlyn at Source FireReads sent an email to me with the recommendation. Last year I adored a different author's book with the same publisher, so I had to give it a chance. Also it's so wonderful to receive a request to review instead of bombarding publishers like normal.
The second reason was that cover. I mean, wow!
Little Creeping Things is about Cassidy Pratt and her struggles with being a social pariah due to a firey accident as a child that left another girl dead. She loves her best friend, Gideon, but they are only friends. (*sad face*). No, wait, this book is about a murder she hears in secret. It's a murder that she described in a notebook she shared with a schoolmate. So who killed Melody? She shares minimal information with her bestie, and Gideon isolates her. It's so hard without the man you love around. She has to follow him around and tell him the truth about the way she feels-no about her suspicions for Melody.
I struggle so hard with young adult thrillers. There is always so much cliche' drama regarding relationships. In this book there is so much angst and mooning over various men, the mystery of it all is completely brushed over.
Cassidy is also really selfish and a little on the crazy side. I mean who writes down imaginary murder plots regarding real people? She spends so much time crying over boys in this book though, it's hard to feel anything for her besides the slight wish she would get stabbed herself.
There are some REALLY BIG plot holes here that bug me. Like a specified search location on a missing person, but presumed dead? There was literally no evidence she was even dead-she disappeared. They would have zero reason to look for her anywhere, Gideon and Cassidy's testimony weren't even strong enough to confirm that kind of suspicion. Also the case set against the first suspect (spoiler free here). It was based on some very small circumstancial evidence. It doesn't take lawyer to see there wasn't a real conviction there. Cassidy also receives some really scary anonymous text messages. Any other normal person would have done what they could to identify that anonymous number, but Cassidy doesn't call it or text it back. She doesn't even search the web for the number.
I saw the ending coming from the introduction of the killer. When Ichaso reveals the character as the killer I felt cheated because I knew it early on and I also feel like there could have been more story there between Cassidy and the killer and less with her male pursuits. It could have been a really interesting look at trauma and they way it cages people, but it didn't do that. It also could have been a good look at they way people make their own truth from events, but it wasn't that either.
The book was VERY flat and I really wanted more, like more than a 13 year old could give me, but that's what I felt like I got and it bums me out.
I could not recommend this to anyone.

Creepy is right... This book kept me guessing the whole time I was reading it.

We follow a group of pretty messed up kids, who blackmail, threaten and lie to each other daily. This turmoil of a cast kept me on my toes wondering, "could it be them? I think so... Nope, not them... Wait, is it?" In the end, I didn't see it coming.

The back story really helped hold the plot together and unfolded so precisely that I felt like I had lived it along with the characters.

I really enjoyed this read. Blasted through it in one sitting. A great creepy read for a dreary spring afternoon.

My review will go live on the blog Book Confessions on 6-2-20

First, I love this creepy cover! What is is about porcelain dolls that make them so creepy? This was a solid 3.5 stars for me. It definitely kept my attention and I thought I figured out "who dun it" a few times during my read but was ultimately surprised when that person was finally revealed. Though they had their ups and downs, I really liked the friendship between the main character Cassidy and her best guy friend, Gideon. Their relationship and dynamic was very relatable. Overall it was a fun, quick read that will satisfy any YA mystery/thriller fan. I think this is a great debut from this author and she does an amazing job at keeping you on your toes.

When Cass was 6 years old, she accidentally started a fire that killed her friend. Now, as a teenager, she is bullied by everyone in school. After talking about how she'd like to kill Melody, the worst bully, Melody disappears in exactly the way Cass joked about, and she needs to get to the bottom of things before she is implicated. This was okay. I didn't like Cass or really any of the characters, and I guessed pretty early on who killed Melody. It felt a lot more young adult, with teenage drama, than I normally like. Overall I didn't love it. 2.5 stars rounded to 3.

Little Creeping Things by Chelsea Ichaso is a promising debut in the YA thriller genre. It tells the story of Cassidy Pratt, notorious in her hometown as the girl who survived. Usually survival is seen as a good thing, but when you survive a fire you accidentally started, and worse than that, another child is killed , you become something of a target for gossip and malice. Cassidy feels like the only people she can trust are her best friend Gideon and her big brother Ash, but when Melody, one of the more vicious and vindictive bullies disappears and Cass is convinced there is something wrong , neither of them take her seriously. When the clues start to point to someone following a plan Cass cooked up as a joke , she is afraid to go to the police and when she gets a mystery text message that suggests the abductor thinks they are in it together , she knows her fears are justified. It becomes a race against time to try to save Melody without implicating herself or putting her family in danger.
After an intriguing start, the pace does get a little bogged down in the middle, and there is a bit of a detour into angst filled teen romance territory before it picks back up and rattles towards a thrilling finale. While I did guess the outcome pretty early on, I enjoyed the book and was happy to read through to see if my suspicions were confirmed. Bonus points too for the truly disturbing cover.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.,