In Missing Dead Girls, Walters shares the story of three intense friendships—two who have ended and one that has recently emerged. Female friendship can be quite intense, to say the least, especially during our teen years. This book takes that intensity and further heightens it through a mix of money (and lots of it), dark pasts, and desire for revenge. It underlines, to me, the dangers of unhealthy relationships, but also of the negative role that the ego can play in some tragic stories about friendships that end up tearing a piece of your soul into shreds. I like the development of the friendship between the two main characters. Both backstories are heartbreaking, but at the end of the book, one is left wondering at how truthful the depiction of one of these stories was, from the very first word.

This is the kind of book—pretty unbelievable story that highlights from very believable, real life things—that can have the potential of helping readers understand the dynamics of toxic relationships in their own lives, as well as the role of their ego in these relationships. However I do feel like it would take a very skilled teacher or book club leader to navigate these conversations, because there is something darkly appealing about the story that, if left unchecked, could actually encourage a reader’s impulses to go in the same direction that the main characters did.

This was a neat twisty one. For sure YA twisty, but I can see it being on a “must read” list for the summer. I wanted more though, like a 10 years later epilogue! I need to see where those two go from there:.
3.5 rounded up, there’s a ton of loose ends I feel.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to receive an arc in exchange for my honest review - all thoughts and opinions are my own!

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately it was marketed as a "fact paced thriller" and that isn't the case at all. The "face paced thrill" is at the END.

I do so very much love the representation of a Sapphic thriller book and i really hope there are many more in the future.

Honestly, this probably would be enjoyed by teens.... which is what it is, YA, so there ya go!

But again, not very thrilling.

Tillie Gray and her mom left Philadelphia and moved to the quiet suburb of Willow Creek for a fresh start. Here, Tillie meets Madison Frank: a beautiful, fun and wealthy girl that provides Tillie with the perfect distraction. Then Madison goes missing. Suddenly, Tillie is caught in a web of secrets that will destroy her if they get out…

I really appreciate that the author added trigger warnings for this book!
The prologue immediately grabbed my attention - it was mysterious and intriguing. Tillie and Maddison are quite toxic characters that have been through a lot - they are interesting to read about and I really loved the intensity of their relationship. I think this book is a story of love and revenge.
I didn’t love the way it was written - I think everything happened too fast and I would have loved to explore the characters more. It was intense, twisty and I read it in just a day because I needed to know what was going to happen!
It describes itself as a ‘sapphic psychological thriller’ and I definitely think that’s accurate! I think 16-19 year olds would especially love this book.
Overall I gave it 3.5/5 stars!

Thank you NetGalley, publisher, and author for allowing me to receive this ARC! I am enjoying this book so far and will update my review once I'm finished.

Thank you Netgalley for this advanced copy!
Trigger warnings about sexual assault and homophobia.

Quick read that I binged in one sitting. The characters are very likable. I was on the edge if my seat waiting to see what happened next. I'll definitely recommend to friends.

DNF. I appreciate the opportunity to read this novel. I don’t believe the writing is for me, though I think maybe a younger true crime fan might read it with a different perspective.

MISSING DEAD GIRLS is about a girl called Tilly Gray who moved to Willow Creek when her mom decided that they needed a fresh start. There, Tilly meets Madison, an alluring, magnetic popular girl who immediately sweeps Tilly off her feet. From there, things seem perfect. Until the two get involved with someone they shouldn’t have and the next thing Tilly knows, her entire school is receiving a text message proclaiming that she killed Madison, the text accompanied by a grisly photo of Madison’s body.

My feelings regarding this book are complicated, so bear with me here.

I feel like it was quite all over the place. The pacing was way off, and it ruined the atmosphere of the book. You go into this book expecting a mystery, but you get a contemporary romance with a thriller ending. That was it.
For the first eighty percent of the book—yes, eighty—we witness Tilly and Madison fall in love. We see them trust each other and tell each other everything, trusting each other with secrets no one else knows, not even their parents. It was sweet.

The prose in this book had promise. It was quite good, and it was easy to enjoy and get sucked into. It was quite descriptive, with a fair few metaphors that swept you off your feet.

But, that was mostly where the good things end.

I have faith that had this book been reworked slightly, or had it been just a little bit longer, it would have been a perfectly good mystery, and one that was fairly enjoyable to read.

As it was, it was fairly short and the mystery got solved within about fifty pages at the very end, which didn’t create much of an intense atmosphere or leave me worrying about the characters. I was mostly just wondering whether Madison was alive.

And when the bad guy got revealed, all I could really feel was disappointment, because it was so fucking obvious that it wasn’t even worth it. It wasn’t much of a shock, and it was kind of pathetic how quickly it all wrapped up after the majority of the book was the build up to the main event.

The thriller aspect of this book is mostly none-existent, and with a bad guy who was quite pathetic—while deserving of what he got in the end—it didn’t deliver like I was expecting to, and when I was finished with it, I found myself wondering, ‘that’s it?’

It wasn’t a bad book by any means, but it definitely needed work. The plot lacked structure to the point where it basically had none, and the book’s summary told you that you were going to deal with a thriller about a missing girl and a bad guy out to blame the main character. In the end, what you got was a romance book saddled with a quick, rushed thriller tacked onto the end, and it just didn’t give me what I was expecting.

I think Walters has room to improve, and so I’m excited to see what she does next, and to see if it’s better than this book.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Tillie, with her painful buried secrets moves to a new town and meets Queen Bee Madison. The two of them quickly fall in love and enters a whirl pool of fast- paced romance. When she hears contradicting less-than-pleasant stories about Madison, she dismisses them because under Madison's glorious, shiny exterior, lies a vulnerable and kind soul that only Tillie can see. But then what happened? Why did the first chapter of the book reveal that Madison might be in grave danger and Tillie is responsible?

A smooth, captivating read with an ending that will make you tilt your eyebrows and gasp slightly.

Tillie and her mother move to Willow Creek to get away from tragedy.There she meets Madison a girl just as screwed up as she is. They quickly connect and trouble arises. This is a fast paced thriller I quickly read. Thanks NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for this ARC!

Genre: sapphic thriller(?), young adult literary fiction
Pace: slow
CW: sexual assault, homophobia, violence
My rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ 💫

📚 Quick Plot: After a traumatic experience, Tillie and her mother leave Philadelphia to start over in the suburb of Willow Creek for Tillie's senior year of high school. Much to her surprise, Tillie meets the enigmatic and beautiful Madison before school even begins. An even greater surprise is that she hits it off with the popular girl immediately. The two find each other obsessively drawn together in a passionate whirlwind romance. But then Madison goes missing and a photograph of her bloody body is sent to the entire school from an unknown number claiming to be Tillie.

📚 Characters: I love the idea of a sapphic thriller. I think lesbians and wlw characters are under represented in fiction so that was my main draw to the story. I found both Tillie and Madison to be compelling characters, each with their secrets and hidden pasts that slowly begin to slip out as the two lose control.

📚 Pacing: The pacing of this book is very strange. I don't think I've ever read a book before where the primary 'content' or action takes place in the last 15% of the book. Reading the plot, if the idea of a thriller excites you, just know ahead of time that there is no mystery or action until the 85% point in the book. Even then, the action is wrapped up very quickly so everything feel rushed. There are definitely loose knots left untied here.

📚 My thoughts: I would rate this book between 2 and 3 stars. The plot itself is quite misleading. This is primarily a young adult literary fiction book detailing a toxic relationship between two people with dark pasts. Madison going missing is a very small part of this book, hardly worth focusing on in the plot summary. There isn't some huge mystery surrounding the disappearance or a big investigation into who sent the picture of her bloodied body.
I was disappointed that the summary led me to believe I would be reading a thriller when this was hardly that. That being said, I did find myself compelled to continue the book despite its slow pace. I liked getting to know Tillie and Madison and their pasts. I thought the depiction of struggling with their sexuality and when/if/how to represent their relationship was realistic. When Tillie talked about Madison folding their relationship into a small piece so as not to draw attention to it, I felt that and I think many others will as well.
I only think that this book should be marketed differently because readers going into the book expecting a sapphic thriller are going to be disappointed that the given plot is not the focal point of the story and is hardly representative of the content.


Thank you NetGalley, SOURCEBOOKS Fire and Sara Walters for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for this ARC!

I enjoyed this book and my only complaint was that it felt more romantic than thrilling. It had thriller aspects throughout, but it didn’t feel like a I was reading a thriller book until about 70% in.

That being said, it was incredibly well written and I did enjoy the twists! I would definitely read more from this author in the future.

I have to give up on reading this author.

No matter how interesting the plot sounds, the ultimate writing of the direction of the plot and characters ends up being a letdown for me.

This book is boring., there is no other way to say it.

It tries to be introspective but its a fine line.

Thank you NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for this incredible ARC, First I would like to say that this book is a very quick read, with less than 400 pages, I was able to get through this in one sitting - but it was also because I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. The characters were so well developed that I was absolutely sucked into this story. I would definitely recommend some trigger warnings would be best to look up for this book though as it deals with some heavy topics. I did love that this thriller book had some romance aspects to it. But, while I was sucked into this story it wasn't my personal favourite but I know a lot of people would enjoy this read!

This was a gripping thriller that I read all in one sitting.

The characters were well developed and the story kept me guessing

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

This book is 360 pages in print. I read it in less than 24 hours. It was a quick page turner, and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. When I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it and trying to figure out how it would all fit together.

Abridged: Tillie and her mother loved to a new town to start fresh. Tillie dealt with some heavy stuff in her past, and her mother hopes new surroundings will be the redux that she needs. Tillie leads a typical life of a high school senior, but she doesn’t seem to have many friends. Enter Madison. Tillie and Madison form a bond that eventually turns into a romantic relationship. They’re willing to love each other in secret, but is their love strong enough to *keep* all of their secrets? When a shocking that includes Tillie’s name text circulates the student body, so much is tested — and so much is at stake.

As a cisgender straight female, I don’t read many books with LGBTQ+ relationships. I am very supportive of #loveislove — I just tend to read books that include romance that is more relatable to my personal lifestyle. Getting a look into how teens choose to keep their LGBTQ+ lifestyles secret was rather heartbreaking, and I am so glad I was able to gain a better understanding of a few things after reading this book.

The book isn’t all romance, however. It’s also a thriller, AND it’s a coming of age book about how girls and women learn to survive in a world littered with assault and abuse.

Easy 5/5 for me! Preorder a copy for #pubdate on 1/24/23.

I think with this book trigger warnings are definitely appropriate for a lot of its audience. With that said, the beginning completely hooked me in a way I wasn't expecting. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was for a while. At first, I was able to look past the very teen-directed writing. This isn't a bad thing especially centered on younger audiences obviously, it's just not my preferred style. I do think these subjects are quite up there for that age group and could easily be done wrong. Now once the beginning was over it took a while for me to get back into it as most of it felt ehhhh fillery throughout until the end when the big finish is disclosed. It was enjoyable although sometimes it came across as a bit forced to me. I think this would be a good read for a certain audience who was just starting this type of genre. Something to ease them in so to speak.

Thank you NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book. While it was described as a "sapphic psychological, fast-paced thriller," I found it fairly slow and pretty dull. I thought the strongest part of the book was the exploration of teenage infatuation and the ability to lose oneself in another.

I didn't find the characters to be well-developed and the story did not do the work to build to the "shocking" conclusion.

Missing Dead Girls is a sapphic thriller, following Madison and Tillie.

The opening chapter sucks you into the story immediately, leaving you eagerly wanting to know more about Madison and her death. We then rewind back in time, and see the leadup to the events.

This was a great book, but I enjoyed the romance part of it over the thriller part. I would've liked more focus on the 'who did it' part of the story. After the first chapter, I expected the pace of the book to be fast paced, however the rest of the story was actually quite a slow burn.

The writing style was perfect, I really enjoyed the prose in this book. Missing Dead Girls was a quick and decent read. I recommend it to fans of Karen McManus and Holly Jackson.

"I want to ruin his fucking life," she said firmly.
I nodded. "Then we will."

Thank you to NetGally, sourcebooks fire, and Sara Walters for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

2.5/5 ⭐

TW: sexual assault, homophobia/homophobic slurs, death of a child

Tillie wasn't exactly thrilled to restart her high school career in a new town her senior year, but meeting Madison Franks turned her world upside down. This first person, contemporary, YA thriller has a lot packed in! Willow Creek is your typical, close-minded small town where secrets and rumors are worth more than gold and appearances are everything. Tillie and Madison couldn't seem any more different, but the truth is that they share more than you would imagine. Something dark and magnifying, electrifying pulses through them when they're with each other - each a mystery dying for the other to unravel them. But will it cost them their lives?

Missing Dead Girls starts with a fast paced intro designed to hook you from the moment you pick it up. It gets going quickly and for the first several chapters I was unable to put it down. However, once you get a few chapters in the book suffers from some pacing issues and it becomes a little bit of a slog in the middle. At the end though, we resume that breakneck speed and get back into the action with a climax that had me on the edge of my seat. The biggest weakness I can say is that our villain doesn't become a threat to the girls until about 80% into the novel, which means there's a good bit of what I would describe as filler. While there is a romance involved it's very clean and there's little more than kissing described. The writing style seems a bit juvenile, but I personally feel that fits with Tillie's immature, narcissistic, and obsessive personality and serves a purpose as helping to illustrate her character. Missing Dead Girls includes LGBT+ representation however it's a bit cliché in that it serves the plot as our characters in the community aren't "out." As a bisexual woman myself, I feel good queer rep is when your character just is LGBT+ and existing. It shouldn't have to be a plot mechanism.

Overall, I did have a good time reading this book and I found both Madison and Tillie to be interesting characters to get to know. I would recommend to fans of Holly Jackson and Karen McManus.