I received a free ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm now beyond the age where I'm not going to feel a little awkward about picking up a YA novel. After all, there's some cracking YA stuff out there these days.

This was.... not one of those.

I felt like I was watching a very badly written melodramatic soap opera (I know those two go hand in hand, but I need to double down on the ridiculousness of this book). The story is told rather than described, climactic things happen and are brushed off, the girls are all fairly unlikeable and many times think and say completely contradictory things. It was sort of car crash reading - I didn't want to continue? But I couldn't look away.

I don't really know where to start with this. The story is interesting enough, but the writing is just...not great. First of all, the story is told by 3 different girls, but all 3 sound the same. It's impossible to tell their voices apart. Second, the story is often unrealistic. The way people react or do things--it's just not believable or logical. Even the dialogue, for instance, often reads as artificial. It doesn't sound like the way people talk. And on that note, there's the literal writing itself. This book needs a serious pass from an editor. There are a lot of grammar and syntax errors, to the point that parts read as if they were written by someone whose first language is not English. I'm not trying to be rude, but this needs a lot of work.

Thank you, though, to Black Rose Writing and NetGalley for providing this copy for review.

Thank you to Black Rose Writing for sending me an ARC via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
1/5 stars. I’m not even sure where to start with this review. This book was terrible. I went in expecting some kind of a mystery with girls backstabbing each other and secrets coming to light. That is not at all what I got. The only reason I finished this book is because it turned into the kind of train wreck that I couldn’t look away from.
First of all, this book is less mystery and more cliché teen drama. Yes, the book opens with an unnamed character running away from unnamed attackers, and we assume that this is one of three girls, Scarlet, Laura, or Rachel. The story then jumps back a month to set up everything that leads up to that moment. I was not surprised when I found out who the dead girl was. I found it easy to figure out. I was not surprised by the killer, again I found it easy to figure out. I was surprised by the second person but mostly because this character was barely around and the motivation was ridiculously stupid.
One of my biggest issues with this book was that I felt as if I was on one side of a thick plastic wall, and the characters were all on the other. There was a disconnect. The characters were flat, one-dimensional and incredibly cliché. We switch between the POVs of the three girls, and each POV sounded the same. The characters were not fleshed out in any way and lacked development. The writing style was more focused on telling me what was happening than giving me a scene and showing me. I found, especially at the beginning, that scenes would be short, and the ones that were important were cut entirely and the characters would just mention it and spell it out in their minds what had happened. There were also several times where a word would be used, and it was definitely not the word that was meant. The tenses kept switching between past and present. There were so many sentence fragments that didn’t make any sense and had no purpose.
Let’s talk about the characters themselves for a moment. I found that none of them had real substance and couldn’t stand on their own. They were so one-dimensional as well as petty, selfish, and ridiculous. Scarlet was the worst for me. Not because she was painted to be the villain, but because she acted like a four-year-old over Rachel and Laura’s rekindling friendship.
“I needed to come up with a different plant. A plan that would get Rachel back and leave Laura behind. She needed to see this as my way or…or I could just forget them both and find new friends. No! Rachel was my best friend, not Laura’s, and I’ll be damned if she thinks she can have her without a fight.”
This is Scarlet’s mindset towards friendship and it reads in my head like a preschooler whining about how you can only have one best friend in the whole world and not more.
This is how I happened to feel about this book. Some people may really enjoy it, but I was definitely not one of them.

I received this ebook from Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion and review. I really enjoyed this book. I felt like there were a few things that threw me off throughout the story, especially ones where the characters didn’t act like you would expect them to. There are several very traumatic things that happen in this book, and some of the reactions surprised me. Other than that, I really enjoyed the story, and read it in one sitting. I would definitely recommend this book.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honesty review.

Wow! This book was great! It was full of twists and turns that kept me reading. Normally in mystery books I can figure out the ending, but in this book I didn’t figure it out until very close to the end. Even then, I still didn’t figure out the whole ending.
I really enjoyed how this book was told in the perspective of the three girls. It was really interesting to see each of the girls’ sides of the story. I also really liked how you could see the characters’ growth throughout the story. I loved how confident Laura became, how Rachel became her own person that makes decisions, and especially how Scarlet was starting to realize she could change. I also enjoyed how the book wasn’t a romance book, but it did have hints of romance blossoming in it.
I do wish we could’ve seen a little bit more about how Rachel lived and how her whole family was. We saw things about her mom, but that was pretty much it.
Overall I really liked this book and would recommend it to mystery lover or someone who just wants a good read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Black Rose Rose Writing for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers starts off with a murder. We don't know who the victim is, or why it happened.

It's told through three POV's. Scarlet, Rachel, and Laura. All very different characters. Rachel is a young teen with a healthy family and wants to be popular. Scarlet is the queen of Craven Falls, but gets zero attention at home. Her mother passed, and her father ignores her and she can't stand the woman he's currently with. Then you have Laura, who has lost her father and brother in a crash, and has an abusive mother. Scarlet and Laura both want to be best friends with Rachel, and it results in a ton of drama.

The concept of this book is interesting. Your questions get answered throughout the story, and a lot happens in this book. It tackles a lot of serious subjects. My biggest problem is that the main characters were very unlikable, and had very little character development. This could have been a completely different story if the characters were different. I didn't find myself rooting for any of them, because they were all very inconsistent, and some were just downright hateful.

I wouldn't classify this book as a mystery, it was more of a drama, but it was definitely all over the place, entertaining at times, and nothing remained boring, that's for sure.

This review is based on an ARC of The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers which I received courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher (Black Rose Writing).

For the sake of clarity, I'll break this review into sections.

The Writing
I am almost certain that this was a rough draft, and I desperately hope some serious editing goes down before publication. Or, better yet, have somebody who knows basic sentence structure rewrite the book. I really don't want to sound rude, but this writing is subpar at best. (Please note that this is directed more at the editing team that the author.)

The Plot
Holy cow! This book gave me whiplash with all the plot twists. The drama is easily the best part of this book, excessive and unrealistic as it is. I never knew what to expect next! Maybe this book isn't supposed to be a comedy, but I can honestly say that the hysterics made me laugh until it hurt. So what if I didn't enjoy the book in the way I was meant to? At least I enjoyed it. Honestly, The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers is as confusing and melodramatic as a Mexican soap opera. I won't complain about that.

The Characters
The characters in this novel are all terrible. Not because they're bad people--they are that also--but because they are extremely stereotypical and uninspired. Not only that, but they are also inconsistent and wishy-washy. It's like the author didn't know her characters as she was writing them. (With how cliched they all were, consistency should have been easy.)

As poor-quality as this book is, I genuinely feel that I would read more of this series. There is something about this story that hooked me. I wouldn't grouse about an addition to this series.

Thank you to Black Rose Writing for providing me with an eARC for this story. The book starts off fast paced. Within the first few pages you are given the “how” to the mystery, and the rest of the book to discover the “who” and the “why”. The story was good, I found myself staying up late at night reading to find out whodunit, however, there were two things that negatively impacted my overall enjoyment of the book.

The first being the way the characters spoke in their dialogues. The book is told through 3 POV’s, alternating between the chapters, and I felt each character had so much repetition. I don’t know how many times you can write “she’ll pay for this”, but I’m sure there’s a threshold and it was passed.

Second, the ending felt kind of disjointed. I can’t really imagine any real-world scenario where things would play out they way they did.

Overall, it wasn’t a terrible book, the story was promising. Some of the characters were intolerable, and it was weird because I’d say this book seems it was written for a younger audience, but the subjects in the book definitely aren’t. There’s instances of sex, drugs, alcoholism, sexual assault, and murder.. I just don’t know.

Thanks to Black Rose Writing for providing a digital ARC of The Dead Girl Under The Bleachers in exchange for an honest review.

I think this book's biggest issue is going to be being shelved as a mystery because its just not. This is a drama. Yes, it starts with a murder and yes, you spend the book guessing which of our 3 protagonists is the titular 'dead girl under the bleachers', but beyond that this just isn't a mystery. Mysteries involve clues and anything that could be remotely considered a clue is dropped at the very end of the book right before the murder. Its a lot of teen drama and fights leading to everyone thinking literally everyone else is the murderer. Its a lot of logical leaps. Maybe if you like soap opera-y books give this one a chance but if you're looking for a mystery you're going to be let down.

With a reshelving I think this book would easily find its audience but as is I anticipate its shelving as 'mystery' severely hindering reader enjoyment and ratings.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of THE DEAD GIRL UNDER THE BLEACHERS by Donna Zadunajsky in exchange for my honest review.***

3.5 STARS

THE DEAD GIRL UNDER THE BLEACHERS opens with a murder, but we do not know the name of the victim or the perp. The dead girl is presumably one of three high school seniors, Rachel the nice girl without a spine, Laura the outcast and Scarlett the mean girl. Secrets permeate THE DEAD GIRL UNDER THE BLEACHERS, not just with the teens, but some of their parents.

Rachel and Laura were both likable and easy to imagine as girls in any American high school. The story has a number of bad guys, so sociopathalogical that they didn’t feel real. Scarlett, her boyfriend Kyle and her stepmother Lianne were over-the-top awful. With the dysfunction in Scarlett’s family, giving her some humanity would have been easy.

I had a lot of theories about victim and perp and was completely wrong. Being caught off guard is part of the fun of thrillers. I wish the end of THE DEAD GIRL UNDER THE BLEACHERS also felt logical and within the realm of possibilities and reality.

THE DEAD GIRL UNDER THE BLEACHERS makes a fun beach read or any time.

I've looked at some previous reviews for this book and I feel like I have read something completely different to everyone else. I didn't enjoy this as much as I believed I would. The concept was interesting and I love stories that focus on women and their friendship and strong female leads but I felt this book was an overall mess.

I think my major issue with this book was that I didn't agree with the writing style personally. It felt stiff and forced and the reader was being told what was happening rather than it being described. I prefer feeling like I am in the setting rather than being told what happened.
I also thought the plot was painfully predictable. I wasn't surprised by anything that happened and found myself rolling my eyes a lot. I think this combined with the insufferable characters was just mind-numbing. I didn't like any of the girls, Scarlett especially. I didn't see much in the way of character development for anyone.

Overall, this is not a book I would recommend or read again.
I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.