Unfortunately this book was not for me. I didn't feel invested in the story or the characters and put down about half way through. For this reason, I will not be posting a review on any other site.

Thank you William Morrow, NetGalley and Author for this advance ebook copy in return for an honest review!

I was freaking ecstatic when I got Nice Girls by Dang! On cloud nine I swear!
For this to be Catherine's debut novel she knocked it outta the damn ballpark here!
I quickly consumed this outstanding, edge-of-your-seat suspense story!
I just had to know what happened here in this heart-pounding novel.
What I loved most were these characters.... They made this book even more realistic and believable.
They were flawed in every way possible but amazing at the same time!
Surely Nice Girls is going to be the talk of books come September 14th.... It sure as hell left me speechless.
I'm excited to see what else is to come from Dang because I believe she has found her calling in the thriller genre.
PS-William Morrow where are y'all at so I can give y'all a hug for providing me with this copy? 😘

Thanks again NetGalley, Publisher and Author for the chance to read and review this amazing book!
I'll post to my Social media platforms closer to pub date!

William Morrow

I was hooked by the premise of this book and was quite enjoying it, that is until the halfway mark. Mary and I shared some similarities of our childhood, and I strongly related to her feelings about coming back to her hometown. The author even raises some important social commentary regarding how crime victims are depicted in the media based on their ethnicity.
What kept me from rating the book higher was the sheer outrageousness of the second half. After how ill Mary spoke of her relationship with Olivia, I didn’t buy her sudden interest and involvement in the case, particularly when it involved another victim, a complete stranger to Mary. I strongly dislike when protagonists suddenly become Nancy Drew/Veronica Mars out of nowhere and solve the case before the police/without alerting them, and have a final showdown with the villain. There is also some very annoying and unnecessary overuse of the villain’s full name in the last third of the book, when the author should have used “he/him” pronouns instead.
All this being said, I am willing to give the author another chance, because I really enjoyed the first part of the book.

Mary finally has everything she's always wanted. She's smart, lost weight, on-track to graduate from an ivy league college and set off on a stellar career. Then, one day Mary's demons catch up with her and in a blinding rage her life changes forever. Ivy League Mary is booted from school and her hopes of ever leaving her little, Midwestern hometown for a big city career vanish in an instant. Forced to return home defeated, move into her old room at her dad's house and get a job at the local grocery store, Mary struggles with the depression that has haunted her for years. When two girls go missing in Mary's hometown shortly after she arrives, Mary realizes more might be going on in her quiet home town then meets the eye. When Mary suspects that a serial killer might by the culprit, she finds herself alienated and alone in her pursuit to find the killer before another girl goes missing and turns up dead.

Completely original, fantastically intriguing with interesting characters. True Crime lovers will enjoy this book! It was hard to put down, and a truly satisfying thriller. An ending that will wow you! Excellent!

Thank you to William Morrow for my e-ARC. All thoughts are my own.

The overall plot of this book was really interesting, and I enjoyed the process of figuring out whodunnit. But Mary as a character, the protagonist, was awful. I didn’t think any of her qualities were very redeeming. She was impulsive and whiny, always blaming others for her situation. She made a lot of really dumb choices, and her character just didn’t work for me.

But my dislike of her doesn’t change the fact that this author did a great job of writing a character with lots of flaws, and the way the story unfolds was intriguing. I would read more by this author.

Nice Girls was such a twisty read. As the story unfolded and more was revealed about the girls killed, I couldn't turn the page fast enough to find out what happened! I rated this 4 stars because the main character, Mary, was a pretty unrealistic character in some situations. She seemed to want to play detective and also insert herself in some pretty dangerous scenarios.

What a great debut book. From page one I was hooked. Mary was being picked up by her father from her Ivy League School because she was expelled but we don't really find out the whole story until much later in the book. She goes back to the town she grew up in and has to face people she doesn't want to. In high school she was the chubby awkward girl but since then she lost weight and felt different. While she is back at home a few other girls are murdered. Are they connected? Who could have possibly killed them? Was the killer someone Mary knew? Well if you want to know I suggest reading the book. It's a fast paced book with some twists and turns that kept me guessing until the end. I definitely recommend this book! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

This book started out promising enough: Mary moves back to her small town in disgrace after being expelled from her Ivy League school. She has no friends, no job and no idea what she’s going to do.
I would have been fine to read a story about her struggle to put her life back together. Instead, it quickly turned into a campy psychological murder mystery that added absolutely nothing new to the genre.
Mary was generally uninteresting and not very likable, and the murder mystery plot was a little ridiculous. The identity of the killer was glaringly obvious, his motive unoriginal.
I am also so tired of
***SPOILER ALERT***
reading about these ordinary, every day characters who manage to single handedly solve crimes that has everyone else stumped and THEN go traipsing after the killers on their own, only to find themselves duct taped and gagged on the cellar floor. It’s such a hackneyed story line and should really be put out to pasture.
Thanks to #netgalley and #williammorrow for this ARC of #nicegirls in exchange for an honest review.

Mary is mortified when she has to return home to her hometown of Liberty Lake, Minnesota after being expelled from Cornell University for assaulting a freshman living on her dorm floor where she was an RA. She had been nicknamed “Ivy League Mary” for her accomplishments and her goals and now she is living back with her father and working at the local grocery store. She gets involved in the cases of two young women who have gone missing from Liberty Lake, one the town darling who everyone is trying to locate and the other a poor girl assumed to have been a runaway. Mary thinks there could be a connection and launches her own investigation while dealing with her own issues.

I was at first intrigued by the plot of this book, but the story went off the rails for me as Mary’s actions became increasingly over-the-top and hard to believe. There are things in Mary’s past that I think are supposed to make her a more sympathetic character, but I found her hard to like. However, there are many more characters in the small town that are much more despicable than her, so there wasn’t really anyone that was relatable. The strange, ambiguous ending leaves a lot unsaid about what is in store for Mary. The story touches on some important issues like bullying and depression, but overall the book wasn’t for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, William Morrow, and Scene of the Crime Early Reads for this ebook. An advance copy was provided to me at no cost, but my review is voluntary and unbiased.

This story was entertaining with a plethora of twists and turns. While entertaining, the story was almost entirely implausible. The protagonist, a 20-something college coed, returns to the small town that she had so desperately wanted to escape and becomes determined to find the person who killed two local girls. Her actions are appealing, but far from credulous, and become almost laughable by the end of the story.

I could not find a single likable character in the story, and really disliked the protagonist, which made the read very difficult for me. The characters demonstrated themes of privilage, violence, racism, racial inequality, and injustice within the police department, courts, and media to name a few! Mental health themes of anxiety, depression, and anger management are abundant, and are accurately portrayed in their effect on choices made by the characters.

The epilogue related the future status of many of the characters, but left me wondering about the protagonist! I really wanted to know what her future would bring.

While this debut novel didn't check all of the boxes for me, the plot was intriguing, the action was well-paced, and I enjoyed the writer's tone. I would definitely read another book by this author, because I believe great success may be in order with some minor polishing!

Thank you to William Morrow, NetGalley, and Catherine Dang for the advanced reading copy.

This book wasn't great. It was very unrealistic. From the start Mary inserts herself into a murder case that she had no reason to get involved in. She then accuses a ton of innocent people, breaks the law multiple times and somehow never gets caught or gets in trouble for any of it.
She was very unlikable and pissed me off with all her whining about how she wasn't popular in high school and how only skinny girls are liked.
Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book for my honest opinion.

Nice Girls:

“And maybe that was why some people prayed so ardently. They hoped that God would take care of the things that they couldn’t. They hoped that there was justice and righteousness out there. People prayed because they were tired. I couldn’t blame them”

Nice Girls gave me a Good Girls Guide to Murder feel, if Pip was unreliable, unlikable, and came home from college after crashing and burning.

I couldn’t stop listening and wanted to know what was going to happen, without really knowing why. Carlotta Brentan has this.. raw honesty about her voice. Every time I listen to her on audio, I’m sucked in. It sounds like she’s always pouring her heart out from a diary. The graphic scenes made me uncomfortable because of how raw and terrifying she sounded. So good.

I did love how realistic some of the social climate was. Leticia hit the nail on the head when she said months went by without a lead on her daughter’s killer, a Black single mother. But a week after a white social media influencer dies, the FBI is involved and they have someone in custody in a week. “If someone had paid attention to DeMaria’s case, they could have caught her killer before he went after someone else”

There is one scene where the author uses the persons first and last name 26 times in one chapter (I counted, that’s a real number). It irritated me to no end. The chapters are short, and I understood this person was the other party in the chapter with Mary.

Overall, I enjoyed it. We had themes of anxiety, mental health, racial injustice, that I think were executed well. I don’t really know why or how, but I was sucked in and couldn’t really stop. For a debut, I’m excited to see where Dang goes next! Thank you WM for the gifted copy. Nice Girls is out 9/7.

This one was just ok for me. It centers on Mary, who escaped her tiny hometown to go to an Ivy League school, then subsequently gets kicked out and has to return with a sense of shame. Meanwhile, a pretty and popular girl who used to be Mary’s friend disappears, and Mary makes a connection between her disappearance and that of another girl and does a little sleuthing on her own.

The main reason I didn’t love the book was because I didn’t love Mary. I found her to be kind of a horrible person, to be honest, though I kept telling myself that perhaps she was just young and insecure. She is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, which I did appreciate, as it kept me guessing throughout.

The message around how different victims are treated differently due to race and privilege resonated with me, and I thought the author handled it well. I also liked the ending of the story when all was revealed; I had an idea of who the villain was but the author didn’t leave many clues for me to feel sure about it, and the motive caught me completely off guard.

So all in all, decent book- I would’ve liked it a lot better if I had felt some kind of connection to Mary but it was still a good story. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found this to be a bit too jumpy - I wish there had been more tangible clues and evidence for readers to piece the story together, as the conclusions that are reached feel like they make little sense.

Mary was the whiz kid at her high school in Liberty Lake, Minnesota. She was chubby, quiet and almost friendless. But the entire school knew she was going “somewhere”. Mary escaped to Cornell using scholarships and loans to finance her education. At Cornell Mary reinvents herself. She loses weight, makes friends, and enjoys college life. But, in her senior year, Mary was kicked out of Cornell for something she won’t divulge. Mary returns to Liberty Lake and takes a job at the local grocery store. She connects with a couple of people she knew in high school. Mary gets drawn into the case of a missing girl. She schemes and lies to try to solve the mystery. There is another missing girl case that has never been solved. Mary is convinced they are connected and tries to prove that they are. Unfortunately, in my opinion, while Mary jumps to many conclusions that prove to be accurate, the conclusions don’t really have anything factual behind them. Amazingly, Mary solves the crimes while in mortal danger herself.

I was hooked from the first page! This is an action packed page turner that kept me guessing until the end. There are so many "missing girl" thrillers, but this one felt like a fresh twist. The characters were well developed, flawed, but so relatable. Wonderful debut.

First off, huge thanks to William Morrow & Netgalley for this ARC of Nice Girls by Catherine Dang!

This was an engaging and pretty impressive debut that I thoroughly enjoyed. From the moment we meet Mary, she keeps us on our toes. She is one of those unreliable characters that you can't help but stick to and see where they end up. The pacing of this story was really good, There are a few little mysteries we are trying to solve here and all of them resolved in a way I could believe. I could not wait to see what the connection between the two murdered women were and I enjoyed the pieces clicking for me as they did for Mary. This is a perfect book to add to your spooky szn reading list!

This is a solid choice for a fast-paced thriller. Mary was a high-achieving student in high school and no one is surprised when she ends up leaving her small town for college. What is surprising is when she returns home after getting expelled and dives into a local missing persons case involving a women she knew in the past. Two beautiful young women go missing in town, one a white Instagram influencer and one a black mother of a young child. The cases are handled with obvious bias but Mary sets out to find out if they are connected.

Mary was a hard character for me to root for because she has some deep anger issues and hang ups about high school that felt a bit excessive. Also, it is kind of confusing about how she gets so much access to information about the case just from knowing people in town. This is a fast-paced and engaging read so it is possible to just overlook these aspects and enjoy the investigation. Be aware that there are some very detailed descriptions of injury and death but it is obvious when they will occur so the reader can skip over, if needed. I will be interested to read Catherine Dang’s future work, especially if she writes more in the thriller genre.

Thanks to Catherine Dang, William Morrow and Custom House, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nice Girls was a fast paced, edge of your seat thriller. Suspect after suspect, it kept me guessing until the very end. Good character development although I'm not sure if Catherine Dang meant for them all to be unlikable or not but they really weren't very good people. Still, it made for a good story and I really enjoyed it.