I’m not sure how I feel about this one still. I liked it while I was reading it but I found it very forgettable. I did really like the characters and the story line.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. A Long Stretch of Bad Days is the story of Lydia and Bristal, two girls from the same small town, but from opposite sides of the tracks. Both girls are in danger of not graduating due to a mistake by their guidance counselor. Lydia has a podcast dealing with living in a small town and the pressure of playing nice. The girls decide to investigate the Long Stretch of Bad Days for the podcast and they uncover many secrets. Darkly comic, an exploration of socioeconomic status in a small town and small town politics.

This book had me hooked from the beginning and I loved it. The mystery was great and had me guessing, the characters and their relationships were great, and I loved the podcast element. This book did great to highlight classes and the socioeconomic statuses and dealing with privilege of living in a higher class. I highly recommend.

I've never picked up a Mindy McGinnis book before this - quite honestly, her novels just don't seem like my cup of tea - but I requested this on a whim, and I'm so glad I did!

If there's one thing I love in novels, it's podcasts. A close second would have to be small-town mysteries, ESPECIALLY when it's a place I'm very familiar with. So a book with a podcast set in small-town Ohio? Count me in! I loved the way McGinnis kept us guessing right up until the end with the mystery. I had a few hunches about how things might turn out, but overall I was very pleasantly surprised by the story.

I also really loved her characters, they felt like real, flawed people, and I truly appreciated that. Lydia especially didn't fall victim to the classic main character syndrome - she was interesting and complex and I found myself rooting for her.

Overall, this was a fun addition to the YA murder mystery canon, and one I hope will get the appreciation it deserves!

- thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc to review!

- McGinnis is an author not to miss. She always delivers on the gritty, realistic stories she weaves, and her characters are fleshed out to the brim, as if they're alive on the page. Lydia and Bristal are so lifelike and flawed, making me root for their journey to discover why the week of bad days occurred. i was hooked from the beginning, and this story is one that I'll remember for a long time.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced review copy of “A Long Stretch of Bad Days” by Mindy McGinnis. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

I’m not a big mystery/thriller reader but I have enjoyed how Mindy McGinnis tackles small towns with big secrets. I very much enjoyed The Initial Insult and The Last Laugh by this author and this gave me similar vibes although not as gory and vomity. The story follows two high school girls who have to work together to get a missing credit in order to graduate. They investigate a series of natural disasters that befell this town dubbed the titular Long Stretch of Bad Days.

I thought that Lydia and Bristal had such a compelling friendship. It seems like they should be total opposites but they had more in common than either realized. Bristal was so hilarious and I felt like she and Lydia working together was the best part of the story. The mystery was interesting especially how so many small details turned everything around.

I didn’t like Lydia’s parents. Her family had an inconsistent portrayal of how much family money they had, but why couldn’t Lydia’s mom get some kind of job? Was it a safety issue because Lydia’s dad was a lawyer for criminals the town hated? I was especially annoyed when it came out that Lydia’s parents had taken from her college fund to maintain the appearance of their old family money lifestyle. They could have downsized their house. Lydia barely seemed to get mad at them for taking from her college fund. Even with scholarships, the schools she was applying to are not cheap.

I did really enjoy this book. It was a quick read and the mystery kept me hooked. I was really impressed by how some things so easily dismissed could add up to solve the mystery. The friendship that grew between Lydia and Bristal made this book shine.

4/5 stars

I love love loved this book! There were twists and turns I definitely did not see coming! Highly recommend!!

I thought this was a good YA thriller that really prioritized its characters. It is filled with humor that makes the mystery a little more lighthearted.

I really liked this one! I liked the snarky characters and that the MC Lydia had a podcast and invited her polar opposite, Bristal, to join her. They live in small town of Henley, Ohio where they begin to investigate a mystery of why someone was murdered but it seemed that not much effort was put into finding the killer, so they set out to find out what they can. Eventually they are led to investigate 2 mysteries and I was hooked. The townspeople, especially Lydia's family name, do not like to talk about anything questionable but Lydia is out for answers! She comes from a privileged home/family name; whereas, Bristal comes from poverty. I like the way their friendship grew as they worked together to solve the mysteries.

An interesting, quick read that kept me reading! I enjoyed the characters, and especially the cat! I enjoyed the mystery, and as someone from a small town, I know that they all have their secrets.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books for the ARC!

A Long Stretch of Bad Days by Mindy McGinnis is another great standalone YA novel from one of my favorite Ohio authors. This new YA mystery thriller isn't quite my favorite from this author, but it still can't be missed. It is absolutely compulsively readable and I enjoyed getting to know the cast. Whether they're likeable or not, they certainly aren't boring. It's a dark read, but very honest and surprising has a sarcastic sense of humor as well. It also includes a podcast which is handled really well within the story. I bet the production of the audiobook would be excellent.

I like the premise with the mismatched characters coming together to do a project, but this book lacks the intensity to keep me reading. McGinnis is normally great at intensity and keeping the story going, but I didn’t care about the premise. The “shocking” events to keep the story going were not surprising enough to perk my interest. The very end is where things wrap up, but not in a believable way.

The cat!!!! Oh my gosh I loved little two-legged Steven. Every scene with him had me laughing uncontrollably with tears running down my face. But onto my review! I have loved everything that I've read from Mindy McGinnis and this is definitely one of my favorites. The podcast media mixed in was so reminiscent of Sadie by Courtney Summers and I love books with that element. While I did enjoy Lydia's character I LOVED Bristal. I'm a sucker for an underdog character that's tough as nails and doesn't give a you know what about anything. The friendship dynamic and growth were absolutely amazing and all the family drama tugged at my heart strings.

Thanks so much to Harper Collins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books for the gifted copy for my review!

I feel torn on this one. I liked the characters a lot, and the slow reveal of the mystery did hook me as a reader, but I think it is going to move too slowly for a lot of teen readers, especially after the hellacious roller coaster ride of The Initial Insult and The Last Laugh.

As a huge fan of books like Sadie this was so good stunning and thrilling.. Thank you to the publisher.

A great, quick read that kept me engaged from start to finish! I liked the mystery and it kept me reading. Another amazing book from Mindy McGinnis!

A dark and edgy read with two teens of different soci0-economic backgrounds find themselves united to record an investigative local history podcast in order to graduate. Together they uncovers secret of their sleepy town's past unwittingly uncovering more than they bargained for when they research the "long stretch of bad days" when their town was leveled by natural and man-made disasters. If you love twisty mysteries and cold-cases, this is your book. Mindy McGinnis is a great YA storyteller. Thanks to Netgalley for the read.

Loved this book. I loved the characters, I think there are few writers going as hard as Mindy McGinnis right now, and small-town secrets are always a great basis for a book.

The Long Stretch of Bad Days to Henley, Ohio residents refers to the 3 day stretch in June of 1994 when a tornado, flash flood, and Henley's only murder happened. Lydia Chass, a senior in Henley, runs a podcast "On the Ground in Fly Over Country", which shifts focus to cover Historic Henley events with Bristal Jamison, when their guidance counselor's mistakes causes both girls to end up one history credit shy for graduation. The girls begin to cover the Long Stretch events, and slowly uncover a missing person never reported on during the tornado, and other inconsistencies in the towns people's recollection of events.

McGinnis does a fabulous job of making you care about her characters from the very first page. She writes gripping stories that hook you from the start and keep you intrigued until the very last page. I will say this one took me a little longer to care about the Long Stretch than in her other books. I Other than the title I guess I didn't fully understand the importance to the story until a bit of a ways in. I was still interested in the story, but a history podcast, starting out by focusing on the Civil War, was not exactly what I thought this book would be about. By the end though I fully engrossed in the story and knew the importance (it doesn't take long to get there, but I do have to say I was a bit confused). McGinnis writes the "good girl teaming up with a bad girl" story well, and always makes each character so much more than what that stereotype would suggest. I love how dynamic both Lydia and Bristal were, and how their individual personalities, in the end, made this story work exactly how it needed too. Another great read by McGinnis!

McGinnis always waxes on the side of the darker, seedier side of the human existence and it's what I love most about her approach for dark YA. This one is no different. Bringing together two girls from the same hometown, one who is privileged and the other that comes from "that family". It's their connection that sustains the book because they both have messy lives and messier family pasts.

The obnoxious way they come together in their senior year and the use of the podcast is (personally) getting old for me in YA, but that's not a knock to the book itself, it's just my exhaustion with the use of it to share information and provide a plot point. And when its the family that you don't want to see/know is part of the problem (a la [book:The Black Queen|59070309]) and you've got the makings of a mystery thriller that all ends up becoming part of the town's history of a pretty epic set of climatic events mixed with a disappearance.

But those girls bring it all together with their own unique ways of handling it, providing a no-nonsense approach to character development.