I think this is a great addition into the teen thriller genre. It is more character driven and a slower pace than similar books I have read. However, the little twists keep the reader guessing. Bartlett’s writing flows beautifully between the third person point of view chapters, police interviews and diary entries. There’s definitely a moody vibe in here that lends well to the book’s overall content.
While there are multiple POV it is easy to follow. Each girl was a fully developed character, and we get to experience their lives, and the author helps us understand the underlying motives behind each person. I will say, that some things were a little predictable, but it didn’t take away from the story at all because it still left the question of why it was happening, and that was the deeper question of the book. Coming from a small town, I think the handling of the queer characters will resonate with students, and they can relate to the issues the characters face.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to students and other adults.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This was a good mystery. I felt like the plot was very similar to some other books I've read, but it had it's own unique spin o the characters.

Okay, so The Good Girls was . . . interesting. Having been sitting on writing this review, I am now trying to remember if anything sticks out for me. It wasn't memorable.

It was very character driven, which is great in most novels but not when it's all that the book focuses on. It's boasted a YA thriller but it didn't really feel like a page turning thriller. The twist and reveal wasn't something I was excited for because there just wasn't build up.

The cast of female characters working together during a #metoo era is a center point, and I don't want to be negative about that. We need more of that in books, especially for the young adult generation.

This is definitely a book I can see others reading. It just wasn't for me. Chalk it up to a "its not you, it's me" for this one.

I think YA mystery is one of my very favorite genres, and I was thrilled to get my hands on The Good Girls, which sounded like everything I love in a book. I was not disappointed!

This book follows the investigation of Emma Baines, who goes missing in the prologue. There is a lot to unpack in her character, and I love when an author can successfully characterize somebody who is not an active present member of the current action in a story. We learn a lot about Emma through the narration style and from Emma's own journal entries.

There are a few of Emma's classmates who are prime suspects in Emma's disappearance. Emma and Gwen were competing for a prize full-ride scholarship. Avery is the captain of the cheer squad that Emma is a part of. Claude has a reputation and has a hard time making friends due to her rebellious nature and what people believe about her. And all of them have something to hide.

The narration and characterization were the strongest aspects of this book. I loved getting to know these girls, flaws and all. They all had their own voice, their own motives, and their own secrets. All of them were beautifully fleshed out. The narration style was truly well done. The book moves from journal entries, to police interviews, to each girls' POV, and it does it seamlessly. It was an incredible reading experience, and allowed the reader to piece together the mystery on their own.

I loved the slow-burning plot, and I was surprised by each twist and turn along the way. I loved this book!

Content warnings: This book does have all of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This book would be best for mature teens. There is sex, profanity, drug use, underage drinking, eating disorders. But this content in this book is something that would be found in a mini series on the CW, if that makes sense.

Trigger warning: sexual assault, rape culture, predatory teacher, murder, suicide, substance abuse, guns

This twisty read follows the investigation for four girls. Three of them perhaps have something to do with the fourth’s murder. Secrets come out, and to protect each other and their truths, they have to stand up to a police department which doesn’t believe them and a school administration actively working against them.

Complex, evenly paced with a compelling, complex characters who are neither “good” nor “bad,” The Good Girls is a layered read that delivers a satisfying mystery and catharsis.

I am hooked on Bartlett’s use of female-led ensemble casts. The girls in this book have such deep inner lives that are intricately woven among themselves and within the context of the mystery. Each one has her own motivations and flaws, which kept me guessing as to the true circumstances behind Emma’s death.

This work also features deft use of interviews and newspaper clipping. The way those feed into contextualizing the murder and seeing Lorne from beyond the scope of the investigation provides so much immersion. It also helps introduce the subplot which led to the murder effectively. The reader gets a glimpse into the established attitudes towards students accusing their former teachers of misconduct, which helps set the stakes for what kind of uphill battle Claude, Gwen, and Avery are up against.

Each of our three girls are queer, and the rep felt true to me. What I did very much appreciate is that the girls’ queerness isn’t part of the forces working against them. The exploration is very interior and does not play a role in the final reveals. What I also appreciated were the nuances around how students may be experiencing the final semesters of college. Much care is taken into depicting what each girl would want from her future, based on her wants but also on the expectations placed. They all also have such different families that seeing those dynamics tug on the tension throughout added extra layers from start to finish.

Rich, complex, and ultimately heavy, it’s a story about three girls trying to do right by their classmate and each other. Perfect for fans of Sadie by Courtney Summers.

I was a bit startled by how quickly this town wrote off a missing teen, a "good" girl, as dead. There's no speculation, no matter how thin, that she might be alive somewhere. I do like the exploration of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be "good". Bartlett explores perception, the ways that other people see us and how we respond to that perception. We see girls leaning into their stereotype, finding safety there, or rebelling against it. Demanding to define themselves on their own terms. It relies on wildly improbably coincidences, though.

<i>Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

3.5 stars

<i>The Good Girls</i> has a compelling premise. Emma Baines ends up dead a few years after the supposed suicide of Lizzy Sayer. Unlike Lizzy, however, Emma was a good girl--well-behaved and qualified to win a prestigious scholarship. Ruled as a murder, there's three main suspects behind the death of Emma: Claude, a troublemaker known for sleeping around; Avery, a cheerleader with strict parents; and Gwen, a competitive student who was also aiming for the same scholarship as Emma. Although all three girls claim they weren't behind the death of Emma, it's clear they know something that others don't.

This was a difficult book for me to rate because some parts worked so well and some parts didn't. The pacing at the beginning was strange. It was both boring and slow, and it took me an unreasonable amount of time to push past the first chunk of the book. However, towards the middle, things really picked up and had me hooked until the very end. I think part of the reason this book was so difficult to get into was the POV style. There are alternating third-person point of views--Emma, Claude, Avery, and Gwen--along with diary entries and police records that were mostly told in first person. While I do understand that the intention of this narration style was most likely to convey the different sides of this story and keep the readers on their toes about which characters are actually suspicious, it was a bit much at the beginning. There were way too many facets of the story for me to keep track of so I didn't feel like I had a good understanding of who was who until maybe the middle of the story. However, despite the confusion, I ended up really loving all of the main characters. As I mentioned before, it wasn't easy to tell the characters apart at first, but once the book delved deeper into the individual stories and personalities of these girls, I appreciated how such different characters could somehow still be linked together.

The themes of feminism and victim blaming were well done. Often times, I think the endings of thrillers are most at risk for being the weakest part of the story but I actually thought the ending was the strongest part of <i>The Good Girls</i>. I wish the beginning/part of the middle wasn't so slow and confusing because I'm sure this will put some people off from finishing the book, which is a shame since the ending is so powerful. Overall, I have some mixed thoughts but I do think it got better as the book progressed.

Trigger warnings; murder, mentioned suicide, eating disorders / body image, drug use and selling, underage drinking, pedophilia, rape, grooming, sexual assault, slut shaming, victim blaming

Thank you Netgalley for the unedited copy. This review is my own.

The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett is a murder mystery surrounding Emma, a straight A student and athlete. But the real mystery is who did it and why. The three suspects are girls in the same grade as Emma; the cheerleader, over achiever and the party girl. Why are they the suspects and what do they have in common?

The Good Girls was definitely a mystery. I really enjoyed reading the girls stories, including Emma’s.
I do feel like I’ve read similar murder mysteries like this one. There was a lack of thrill and at some points I wanted more to happen with the “killer”.
I would recommend this book to my friends.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this book that I was given in exchange for my fair and honest review.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book. The reliance on tropes and clichés made it too familiar. I'm sad about it because there were things I liked, but as a teacher, I just can't suspend my disbelief any longer when I see high schools that look like the breakfast club where there is some clear cut hierarchy. It's just so unrealistic for teens to fall into such obvious categories.

I was not expecting good things from this book, to be honest. I was hoping to be like Sadie, but it was worse than that. This book is tedious.

Claude is the school slut. Avery is the perfect cheerleader. Gwen is the overachieving brainiac. They have nothing in common, but when Emma Baines goes missing, they are all suspected of being involved. How does a good girl like Emma end up dead in the river? Only the other three know, and they're not telling. Yet.

This book had a really strong premise, but after finishing it, I felt like I'd read it before. It didn't distinguish itself from the many other "good girl murdered" books that I've read, and relied heavily on typical tropes and plotlines. I can't decide if the author didn't try hard enough, or tried too hard. I just wasn't surprised, and I really wanted to be. It wasn't terrible, and it wasn't fantastic.



I received this ARC courtesy of NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review.

This was really great. I'm always here for girls taking back their power. The characters were great, the dynamics were awesome, I loved the twist. No real complaints

Wow, I absolutely loved this book! I downloaded it this afternoon and spent the whole rest of the day reading it.

The Good Girls is a multiperspective novel with a murder mystery. It’s difficult to discuss some of the aspects I liked most about this book without spoiling it. This is a book with a very current and modern look at the male gaze and the way women are expected to fit into specific categories and only those categories. The girls in this book are not single category girls. They’re richly written and flawed and at times they’re unreliable narrators. This is a little more than a high school murder story.

“It was the story we all shared - the liars, the bad girls, the good. The nerds and the cheerleaders. The tragic, heartbreaking, conveniently dead girls. The silenced”.

This was a murder-mystery: a girl gets pushed into Anna’s Run river - but who & why.

The tale tangles up seemingly I unrelated characters to find a solitary thread among them. Emma was the perfect straight a student with no time for none sense but she still ended up in the woods at night.

Overall, this was a fast paced and fun read. I didn’t really know how things were connecting until the later part - at about 60/70% done it’s pretty obvious. I think the characters were likable and not cliche which I appreciate!

Some of the timelines and sections jumped around a bit so there were parts that were a little confusing/messy. But I think this would be an enjoyable read for most - if you enjoy young adult (high school age).

I also love this cover art

TW: sexual assault, violence & related.

*I received an arc in exchange for an honest review*

3 stars. The beginning of the book really pulled me in, but the plot eventually becomes a mystery for the reader and not the characters themselves. I was annoyed because it seemed like the characters were trying to solve the mystery but it was later revealed that they knew way more than the author was letting on, which is good, but I don't want the entire intrigue of the book to rely on cliffhangers and withholding of information. I liked that some of the book was interviews and journal entries, and all three main characters were thought out and strong characters.

The disappearance of a girl. Last seen being pushed into Anna's Run in a video that is circulating through social media. The police question a series of people. The town child rebel. The cheer captain. The academic rival. So many secrets are uncovered in their investigation. Including secrets that are worth killing over.

This story was gripping. I couldn't out it down and finished it in a day. The writing style was a bit "off" for me. It was hard to follow all the different story lines, as it jumped back and forth between characters and police interviews. However, I stuck with it because I had to know if my suspicions were right. They were.

There are some sensitive areas that this book hits on. These could be triggers for someone. Sexual assault, drugs, alcohol, murder, suicide.

As a captivating new YA thriller, The Good Girls kept me guessing the entire time. With every page turn came a new mystery, a new secret that revealed just enough to keep me wanting more. As I read further, I began to admire the courage and strength that Emma, Avery, Gwen and Claude shared. Once I started to put the pieces together, I realized that their decision for hiding the truth wasn’t easy, but it was necessary—which led to a twisted revelation that would shock the entire town. After all, people aren’t always who you think they are. The Good Girls is also a reminder of the current MeToo movement that has inspired so many, like these strong characters, to break their silence. This book is perfect for anyone who enjoys mystery thrillers with empowered female leads.

Twisty YA mysteries are popular these days, and this falls into that category pretty well. Some of the stylistic choices didn't necessarily serve it well, in particular the language style in the interviews (they ended up reading more as flashbacks/internal monologue rather than something plausibly spoken in their intended context), the jumping around between POVs which made it somewhat difficult to connect with the individual characters, and the 3/4 setup vs. 1/4 infodump to make sense of the setup pacing. Still, it's certainly compelling enough, and might have appeal to fans of recent releases like Sadie and I Killed Zoe Spanos or books by Holly Jackson and Karen M. McManus , as well as the Burn for Burn trilogy or even The Westing Game.

"The Good Girls" uses prose, text messages, news articles, blog posts, and police interviews to tell the story of a girl thought to be murdered for reasons unknown. Everyone has an alibi, but everyone also seems to have a motive. This book will leave readers wondering what the next piece of this much larger puzzle is, and how everything fits together. In the end, the audience's patience is rewarded with an altogether satisfying conclusion of characters' lives crossing in unexpected ways. The less you know going into this one, the better.