I'm finally getting around to providing reviews of titles that have been sitting on my shelf for some time. Girl at the Edge by Karen Dietrich was a solid read. It started off well, but somewhere in the middle it just slowed down and instead of being a fast-paced thriller, it became more of a slow burn. Honestly, it was a bit jarring and threw me off a bit, but I was determined to finish the story. The characters were interesting, but the pace slow down took away a lot from the story.

There were times when the writing was quite sweet, but, overall, it just doesn't really go anywhere.

I really was hoping to enjoy this book but it absolutely fell flat. I was very disappointed in this one.

An intriguing, well-written nature-versus-nurture psychological thriller - a daughter grapples with this question, her father on death row for killing 11 people. She's never met her father, but nevertheless is obsessed with understanding what he's done and why. When Evelyn meets Clarisse, another daughter of a murderer, they bond over their shared curiosity and obsession.
It begins as a slow-burn, but the pacing gradually picks up as the story unfolds. Engaging, well-written, with interesting characters and questions. Recommended.

DNF. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy! I decided to not keep reading this one, it was not for me. Thanks!

Girl at the Edge
by Karen Dietrich

Grand Central Publishing
General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date 03 Mar 2020


I am reviewing a copy of Girl at the Dg through Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley:




No one who lived in St. Augustine could forget the day Michael Joshua Hayes walked into the mall, and walked out a mass murdered. He killed eleven people!




Now Micheal Joshua Hayes has spent over a decade on death row and his daughter Evelyn who can’t remember a time when her Father wasn’t an infamous killer wants to unravel the mystery of what drove her Father to shoot these innocent people.




Evelyn’s search has brought her to a support group for children of incarcerated parents, it is there a powerful friendship develops between her and a girl named Clarisse. Clarisse and Evelyn soon become inseparable. By the beginning of the summer Evelyn is poised at the edge of her future and she finds herself having to make a choice, whether or not to believe that her parent ‘s legacy of violence is escapable or that history will keep repeating itself.


Will she be able to escape the violence p, or will she end up perpetuating it?



I give Girl At the Edge Four out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

Girl At The Edge reminds me of Defending Jacob and the Murder Gene. Only so much worse.

Or better. Dietrich didn't set out to write a book that would leave you feeling all happily-ever-after. She wrote a book that will make you examine your soul. She gives a poetic elegance to words that flow from one page to the next that leaves the reader afraid to blink for fear she will miss something.

Kudos to Ms. Dietrich, can't wait to see what you do next.

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for an early peak at this book.

I just...couldn't finish this one. The plot seemed promising...but I just couldn't get through it. I found the narrator to be a little annoying and I just didn't feel motivated to finish reading. Perhaps I'll give it another go...

Girl At The Edge by Karen Dietrich is a tough, dark story so beware. The main character and unreliable narrator, Evelyn, is the daughter of a murderer, how’s that for an intriguing hook? She wants answers about what her father has done. I don’t blame her!

Check it out:

Not a single resident of St. Augustine, Florida, can forget the day that Michael Joshua Hayes walked into a shopping mall and walked out the mass murderer of eleven people.

He’s now spent over a decade on death row, and his daughter Evelyn – who doesn’t remember a time when her father wasn’t an infamous killer – is determined to unravel the mystery and understand what drove her father to shoot those innocent victims.

Evelyn’s search brings her to a support group for children of incarcerated parents, where a fierce friendship develops with another young woman named Clarisse. Soon the girls are inseparable, and by the beginning of the summer, Evelyn is poised at the edge of her future and must make a life-defining choice. Whether to believe that a parent’s legacy of violence is escapable or that history will simply keep repeating itself. Whether we choose it to or not.

This novel will make you think hard and you will get swept up in Evelyn’s thoughts and questions. You will find yourself asking the questions about nature/nurture and will Evelyn end up walking the same path as her evil father? Yikes!

This is out now! You can buy it here.

What an interesting premise - two children of criminals meet in a support group to see if they carry the same genetics as their parents...genes that would make you kill. Is it Nature vs Nuture? Or can you be both?

This book explores both sides in a very different way. It is dark, so if that doesn't work for you this won't be one for you to read.

For all you Murderinos out there - myself included - this is an interesting take on a young woman whose father is in prison for murder. Not only that, but you see this woman slowly go downhill and you start to wonder about her emotional wellbeing. I think the best part of this book was that the girl never really seems to understand who she is. And if that's not most of us...

Girl at the Edge is a book that you might want to keep reading. Maybe because you want to make sure you stay more sane than the main character. Watching her fall is like candy for us Murderinos. And of course, you want to read all the way to that last page.

4/5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley for the early copy of Girl at the Edge. This book was definitely weird and Evelyn was crazy! Its about a girl named Evelyn who had a father who killed many people and was a murderer and everyone saw Evelyn as the murderer's daughter. Everyone knew who he was. Evelyn becomes a little obsessed with this whole killing thing. She reads from another person named Andy who is in jail as well and reads his letters that he writes to his sister and that she posts on a blog for him. She becomes obsessed with the whole killing deal. She meets a girl named Clarisse in a support group and they become friends since both of their fathers were killers. Evelyn creates a "test" to see if either one of them would have the willing power to kill. Evelyn does something crazy and Clarisse starts thinking differently about Evelyn.
This girl was just insane. The writing of this book was okay, not my favorite. It was hard to keep my interesting through some of it. The ending was good because you do wonder what the father was like and what he would say to his daughter.

GIRL AT THE EDGE is more of a character study of a teenager whose father is on death row, rather than the thriller I was expecting. Evelyn's father is a mass murderer, which is an incredible burden to bear as his daughter. Is evil in her DNA, and is ending up like him unavoidable? The writing is good, however the story just isn't for me. Stopping at 40%. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

"My father is a murderer." So begins Girl at the Edge, a compelling and deeply disturbing consideration of the invisible victims of horrendous crime: the perpetrator's family. Evelyn's father had an extramarital relationship with her mother, Mira, and when his wife learned of the affair and left him, he took up residence with Mira. Six months before Evelyn's birth, he kidnapped his wife from the jewelry store at which she was employed, situated in the Ponce de Leon Mall in St. Augustine, Florida. He shot and killed eleven other people in the mall before forcing his wife into his car and shooting her. Evelyn has never met or corresponded with her father; has never visited him at the Florida prison where, condemned for his crimes, he will reside on death row until the sentence is carried out.

Evelyn's story is told through her insightful but chilling first-person narrative. She can't recall when she first became aware of her father's history -- she has no "sit-down-and-have-a-serious-talk-with-my-mother memory" in her mind. But she has memories of other children taunting her at school. "A kid who sat next to me in reading group in first grade who whispered in my ear, 'My dad says your dad killed people, . . .'" When she was six years old, she and her mother moved to Pass-a-Grille, a small beach town two hundred miles from St. Augustine, and they continue residing there with her mother's partner, Shea. Evelyn has numerous new articles about her father bookmarked on her internet browser, but doesn't open the links. She describes how she can never escape the knowledge that her father's "actions are like a rock thrown in the water, creating a wake, circles of motion emanating from the center out, ripples in the surface. His actions ended ancestral blood lines, tore lovers apart, left children without mothers an fathers, made orphans and widows with each squeeze of the trigger. And now his actions overshadow him. He's reduced to a mug shot, a name on a list 00 of mass murderers, mall murderers, death row inmates."

And as his actions overshadow him, they hound and perplex Evelyn. She has moved from simply knowing what happened on that horrible day to needing to know why it happened." And contemplating whether, because he was capable of committing such monstrous acts, she is inevitably like him and, therefore, also capable of killing.

Dietrich's prose is eloquent -- rich and evocative, almost rhythmic which, given that she is a poet is not surprising. She describes Evelyn's feelings and inner struggle convincingly and empathetically. In Evelyn, Dietrich has drawn a complex, deeply trouble character. She has disturbing visions and has to remind herself that what she is seeing is not real. She maintains The Catalogue of Everything I've Done Wrong into which she enters details concerning acts about which she feels remorse or shame. Despite being raised by a loving mother, and living in a stable home with Mira and Shea, she wrest;es with self-doubt and tries to understand whether the dominant force in shaping her character has been nurturance or if, perhaps, she shares an inherently dark nature with her father. Dietrich says Evelyn is "grappling with her own identity and trying to figure out how to navigate the legacy her father has left through his violent act."

The story moves at a steady pace, as Evelyn joins the support group and her friendship with the risk-taking Clarisse deepens. The two girls have much in common and embark upon a course of action fraught with danger. Dietrich's examination of Evelyn's includes staggering developments that are shocking, as well as heartbreaking. Evelyn and Clarisse are not typical American teenage girls. They are part of a distinct group who are involuntarily saddled with shame, notoreity, revulsion, and a desire for normalcy that perpetually eludes them because of the heinous actions of a family member. Dietrich deftly encourages readers to consider their plight and draw their own conclusions, even though she notes that she believes "we're all at the mercy of both nature and nurture."

Girl at the Edge is a fascinating study of one young woman's circumstances that is not easy to walk away from after reading the last page. Readers will find Evelyn's inner turmoil and actions haunting, and will likely never view a news story about yet another mass shooting the same way again.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.

This is a dark book, but make no mistake, it makes you think. The age old question....nature vs. nurture, and does it make a difference? Evelyn’s father is on death row for a horrific crime. Is Evelyn like her father? Can she kill someone?

This was an interesting read, though not exactly for me. The narrative moves slowly, firmly embedded in the mind and experience of Evelyn, the daughter of a convicted mass murderer. It's psychological, but not thrilling. I found it read more YA than I was hoping, but I feel certain this book has an audience. Just wasn't me.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Grand Central Publishing and Karen Dietrich for the opportunity to read and review this dark thriller. 4.5 stars!

A serial killer walked into a mall and killed 11 people in St Augustine, FL, and now sits on death row. His daughter, whom he has never met, is a teenager now obsessed with death and trying to understand why her father did what he did. Her mother encourages her to go to a support group for kids with incarcerated parents where she meets Clarisse, daughter of another murderer. They instantly have a connection and spent the summer together talking about testing each other to see if they could be like their fathers.

This is both a coming of age story as well as exploring the topic of nature vs nurture. The writing is spot on, even when it is dark enough to make you shiver.

Girl at the Edge is a story about nature vs. nurture. Evelyn and Clarisse meet in a support group for teens with incarcerated parents. As they become friends things start to spiral out of control, but will they take it too far? Or stop just in time? This book was well written, and had a sense of foreboding throughout, but I really wanted more from the story. There were just too many questions left unanswered and the book ended up being too dark and depressing for me.

Evelyn has always felt she had something dark growing inside her.....something possibly passed down from her father, who is on death row for a mass murder at a shopping mall. Her mom suggests she go to a support group for children of incarcerated parents. She agrees, and it is there that she meets Clarisse. They become instant best friends. Clarisse is dealing with the same demons that Evelyn is. Then Evelyn proposes that they play a game to prove that they are not like their fathers. They will each try to kill someone. If they can't go through with it then they are nothing like them.
I have mixed feelings about this book. It started out really slow and I almost quit reading it but I am glad I didn't. I liked the book overall. However, Evelyn had no redeeming features and I felt that her character was a little flat and didn't feel real. The storyline was unique and fresh, and I wanted to keep reading to see how it all ended.

This book was not what I was expecting. I had expected a thriller and a plot twist that started with a brutal crime and the typical who dunnit. However, this is more of a psychological breakdown of a girl trying to understand and accept her father is a serial killer.

The author does and excellent job breaking it down and leading us (the readers) to want to understand the fathers actions as well.

I would recommend this for those that are fans of the Slow storyline, with strong character building. This is a nature vs nurture at its truest form.



*Thank you Net Galley, and the Publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.