Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Murder on a School Night is a YA murder mystery romcom which follows teen Kerry as she investigates a string of menstrual-product-related murders.

This was a pretty funny read. Despite the murders at its core, it manages to retain its humor. The plot is centered on relatively likable characters, and the Big Twist was deliciously twisty and unexpected. In all, this was a refreshingly entertaining read which balanced humor and severity well, and which I think a teen audience will thoroughly enjoy.

This book brings the awkwardness of '90s/ early 2000s high school comedy movies to a new level.

The dialogue and story felt give Mean Girl the movie vibe, with its camp take on present-day teenage life mixed with ridiculousness. However, it didn't know when to stop and lost its desired charm.
I can only handle things to a degree, and the book exasperated me with the vagina talk and annoying character of Annie.
The pacing was too fast for me with how things happened, and the plot was mundane without all the talk of vulvas and weird hardcore feminist talk that felt like the opposite - I know this is for teens, and feminism can be something to learn but didn't feel like it was done correctly.

Some ideas can only work as a movie or a show because they can be translated there well; this book might have fit the screen better because it wasn't a good fit as a novel.

This was a fun young adult murder mystery! I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone over 18 as the characters read super young, but I overall enjoyed the story. I think this could be a real hit for teenagers. There were some really fun scenes in here (ex: death by menstral cup or reading Umbrella by Rihanna at a funeral).

Thank you to the publisher and net-galley for providing an e-arc in exchange for my review.

4⭐️

Kerry's best friend Annie wants nothing more than to be popular. She doesn't care that the popular crowd regularly make fun of them and throw their coffee at them almost daily; Annie knows one day they will fit in. And they get their chance when the queen of the popular crew, Heather, starts receiving mysterious Instagram messages from someone pretending to be her dead father. Known for their interest in mystery, Heather asks Kerry and Annie to investigate.

Kerry does not want to be popular and would much rather stay home. Especially after she's made a fool of herself in front of the new guy, Scott, multiple times in a day. But she went to the party for Annie's sake. Kerry thinks she's going to get to hook up with Scott at the party when they accidentally stumble on the body of Heather's best friend, Selena. Selena was found with a menstrual cup in her mouth. Over the course of the week, Kerry stumbles on two more bodies, each with menstrual products found on the body. Kerry and Annie went from investigating a troll to a serial killer in the matter of a week and Kerry did not sign up for this.

This was adorably campy and I love it. I loved following these young, anxious, feminists' as they try to make a place for themselves in the cruel world that is high school. I think Annie is the perfect opposite of Kerry. Kerry is extremely anxious and a people pleaser who wants nothing more than to stay at home with her Agatha Christie books. Annie is a social butterfly who desperately wants to be a popular kid no matter what. She lets every embarrassing thing roll of her shoulders in what is probably false confidence, including riding a Paw Patrol kids bike to school and being covered in coffee regularly. I think every anxious person needs that social butterfly friend and Kerry and Annie are wonderful together!

Thanks Netgalley and Katherine Tegen Books for providing this ARC to me!

This was a fun, delightful YA romp of a mystery! Two high school girls, Annie and Kerry delve into a mystery full of period products, murder, and suspicious going-ons. Though I had to overlook a few things like the book not knowing if it was taking place in America or the UK, the journey and ending was fun! I loved getting to know these characters and you could empathize with their teenage angst dealing with crushes and being in the popular group. But I never had multiple bodies showing up in my town during high school. Would recommend this for fans of fab YA mysteries and those who just want a light-hearted mystery! Looking forward to more adventures with this crew!

This was so silly & I was so interested in reading it based on the blurb alone, but I think this is a little too Young Adult for me to fully enjoy. To be fair I am 29 so obviously I'm not the target audience but if I was younger I think I would've had a great time with this one. It was a perfect mix of comedy and thriller to keep the pace up, while still making the story interesting enough to want to keep reading.

Thoughts

I wanted to love this one. I wanted it to be fun. And I think it was supposed to be fun. But that wasn't my experience with it. It started too strong, too cringe-worthy, and it didn't get better from there. It was a rough read, to say the least.

Pros
Trainwreck Friends: The one thing I did love here was the best friends at the center. Sure, I wasn't a big fan of their vagina monologues, but I did love their dynamic. They're always striving for more, for some way to live their best lives, and they're really, really bad at it. They're absolute trainwrecks on their own, and they're worse together. And I loved that energy.

Offbeat Humor: In a market absolutely flooded with mediocre teen thrillers, the one thing that really helps this one stand out is the humor Kate Weston weaves throughout it. It's discordant, off-beat humor, dark and darkly funny. I appreciate that. These characters are wacky, and that means you can't quite take this book seriously. And that's a good thing. That makes it stand out.

Grisly: With a trainwreck at the center and humor holding it all up, I wasn't really expecting grisly murder scenes, but that's what I got. And I loved that. It feels wrong in just the right way. These murder scenes were absolutely macabre and grotesque--and creative with their use of menstrual products! They're unexpectedly jarring in a good way. They offset some of the irreverent humor, and they help to keep a reader on her toes.


Cons
High Key: "High key" may sound exciting, but in this case, it really wasn't. This book hits you in the face pretty much on the first page and not in a good way. I'm glad these gals are feminists pushing for their right to exist without shame in the world, but hitting us with vagina banter right off the bat was coming on too strong. It was an off-putting beginning because I didn't know these characters yet. This book evidently means to push the envelope, perhaps in an effort to speak to teens, but... I don't think teens want it quite like this. Every aspect of this book was high-key and over-the-top, from the overtly "feminist" main characters to the sexist male teacher to the incredibly stupid adults they faced at every turn. It just... wasn't fun to read.

Cliquey: The setup of these friend groups is so '90s, in a bad way. It's so stereotypical. The mean girls (and the hot guy boyfriend) are at the top of the food chain. The losers would do anything (yes, anything!) to be a part of the group. And... aren't we all a little tired of this dynamic? Not to mention that the social landscape for teenagers has shifted dramatically post-COVID, so this type of setup doesn't necessarily look the same. It felt overdone. It felt uninteresting. It felt cliché.

Annoying Annie: I don't know if I've ever read a character so annoying. Her antics aren't really fun -- and aren't really antics. She's incredibly immature, which made me question on more than one occasion exactly how old they were supposed to be. She's ridiculous and over-the-top. "Ridiculous" is the only word that even comes to mind. Why Kerry is friends with her when she's obsessed -- yes, obsessed! -- with becoming popular is beyond me. And when she's one of our leads, I mean, it was hard to read. Very cringe-worthy.


Rating
⭐⭐
2/10

Fans of Ripley Jones's Missing Clarissa might just enjoy this new best friend duo. Fans of Netflix's Sex Education may enjoy these offbeat feminists.

Thank you to Netgalley and Katherine Tegan Books for the ARC.

🌟🌟🌟🌟4/5 stars

Murder on a School Night is a hilarious YA mystery about two friends determined to become popular…and to solve the murder of their classmate. Kerry and Annie finally get an invite to a party, only to discover the body of their nemesis. When the Queen Bee asks them to clear her name, Kerry and Annie use their knowledge of true crime (and Agatha Christie mysteries) to tackle the case.

I laughed throughout this wacky murder mystery. Though it did have some odd elements, they cracked me up and I was entertained. There was romance, snappy dialogue, and a twisty mystery. This book was a combination of Booksmart and Truly Devious and I need a sequel now.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book just didn’t hold my interest very well. I was excited to receive a copy for review from NetGalley but found that it was just not what I was expecting. I really enjoyed Turkey Devious so I was expecting this one to be a hit for me too and it just fell short. The characters felt like sketches and the mystery didn’t really feel explored until the last fifty pages. I was able to guess the twist and didn’t find any of the revelations shocking. I work at a high school and felt the main characters in the book were speaking and acting more like middle schoolers rather than juniors in high school. And a lot of the dialogue was repetitive. It reads like a cross in between Mean Girls and Scooby Doo. The murder and police all but call them meddling kids. I also don’t think it should be marketed as a rom-com

Overall, this book started off pretty strong for me but I lost interest as the book progressed.

I thoroughly enjoyed the period puns and feminist push in this book. This angle in the book was quite funny, relatable, and gave me the warm fuzzies at the normalization of it and how that may positively affect young readers. The death by period products was funny, and I laughed (and cringed) at the ineptitude of DI Wallace when it came to the practical applications of these products.

Now, I initially liked the characters but both Kerry and Annie quickly came to annoy me. Let's start with Kerry, our supposed main character. The book is told from her POV and yet she absolutely did not give me main character energy. Somehow the book seemed to revolve more around Annie, Kerry's best friend. I don't explicitly dislike Kerry, I just don't feel like she was an active participant in the story until the end. Most of her inner monologue is about how much she doesn't want to be doing whatever it is she's doing: she doesn't want to be at the party, she doesn't want to be solving any mystery, she doesn't want to be near her crush, etc. Then she will act in opposition to all these thoughts so the storyline progresses, but then she goes back to being kind of a wet blanket. Also, I feel like the trauma of finding three dead bodies wasn't addressed with Kerry as much as it should have been. She's a teenage girl who found three people she knew murdered, and yet I don't recall her being very affected or receiving any real help after that.

Without Annie there wouldn't be a story. Annie is the one with all the energy and the desire to solve the mysteries, and I really admired her tenacity to go after what she wants. The thing about Annie that ended up annoying me the most was her crazy desire to be popular. I just don't understand why she wanted it so badly. She seems like a very intelligent person when it comes to normalizing the female body and solving mysteries but then she wants to be BFFs with her bullies? Give the teenage girl more credit, she's not dumb, and it's weird to me that she seems to not understand that these people treat her horribly. I just don't get why she wants to befriend them at the potential cost of losing Kerry. There's one line in the book where Kerry comes to the understanding that Annie just likes everyone and that might be why she wants to befriend them, but it seems to me like it's more of an obsession on Annie's part than just a desire to be friends with more people.

Annie and Kerry both have the potential to be better characters. They feel more like stereotypes of the quiet loner and her one bubbly friend than real people. I wish that they had been more fleshed out and less like the caricatures they seemed to me to be.

The romance was OK. Scott seems sweet and I do think he and Kerry are good for each other, but there wasn't really anything special there for me. They share some cute moments together but nothing beyond that. The popular kids are the same way- they're OK characters but nothing special. Their character growth happens more like a switch being flipped: one minute they're two-faced and mean and the next they're kinder and more relatable.

I think the best character was actually DI Wallace. He went from being a clueless, misogynistic man to someone who ended up learning and growing as a person. He's a more minor character and at first only seems to serve as the butt of a joke, but he ended up having actual character growth.

As much as I initially liked the humor, the book got to a point where everything started to feel like a joke or was forced. The whole book started to feel performative, like Disney Channel shows with the big, over-the-top writing and acting. I really could see this being a more PG-13 Disney production than a novel. Some things felt very childish and under-developed whereas the murders were a little gruesome (while still remaining somewhat comical). It created a dissonance that never went away while reading.When we finally got to more intense scenes I was too bored to feel invested. I was annoyed with the characters, the dialogue didn't seem to flow very naturally, and Kerry's POV was repetitive.

The reveal of the murderer at the end was a twist, but not really in a good way. It feels like there wasn't really any solid motive and the whole thing came out of nowhere. It just felt off, and the reveal scene itself was incredibly rushed.

Honestly, this book ended up being a let down to me. The plot and characters were lackluster and the things I liked just couldn't overshadow those I didn't. I really admire the way the author uses humor and the characters to address topics like gender, periods, female anatomy, first relationships, and friendship, but at some point I needed more than good intentions.

This book just wasn't what I was expecting. I think that younger readers will identify with and appreciate the story more than I could. For me, it was a little clunky and underdeveloped, but the parts I liked really did keep me reading through to the end. If it wasn't for the overall positive messages in the book I might not have finished the book.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for my copy of Murder On A School Night. At times in the book a certain character Annie I felt was so annoying that I did not want to read, however as the book goes on she did grow a little on me. Although I was able to figure out the twist of the book I felt that it proved to be a fun read. I would have liked a little more character development of all the characters.

“I imagine my tombstone: She met a hottie and alas it killed her.”

“Murder on a School Night” was hilarious. I mean, I expected it to be, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the amount of smirks and giggles these pages earned from me. It gave “Mean Girls” and “Pretty Little Liars” for sure, which I think was the goal. Reading this really brought me back to those horribly awkward teen years. I had a best friend in high school that reminds me somewhat of Annie: a little awkward, but really great with people. And me, the slightly emo bestie beside her that really did not want to be popular and maybe held her back from being so? I felt that. Deeply. I also liked the period content. I personally love talking about the menstrual cycle and all its (painful) glory, so that was a fun theme throughout the novel. While I can’t say all my views completely align with that of the author, I think the dialect was spot on for teens today, and I wish I had been as bold and cool at that age.

I would recommend this novel for ages 15+.

4 Stars!

I think maybe I just need to stop reading mystery novels where amateur teen sleuths try to solve murders because the whole time I was just like "no, stop doing that! you're going to get hurt!" I did enjoy it but also got fairly stressed out several times. Kerry and Annie are best friends living in a small UK village and school is just starting for their penultimate year (they call it junior year but I didn't think UK schools had something like that so I did get confused about where we were for a while). Kerry is shy and deals with moderate to severe anxiety, but her best friend Annie is much more outgoing and fearless. Annie has been trying for years to get in with the small, tight-knit popular crowd at school, which is headed by unofficial queen Heather. When Heather is being threatened via Instagram, she comes to Kerry and Annie and asks for their help to figure out who it is. Annie finagles an invite to a party at Heather's house, which Kerry very much does not want to attend, and while there they figure out that it's Heather's best friend Selena who is messaging her (and also sleeping with Heather's boyfriend). A short while later, Selena turns up dead with a menstrual cup shoved in her mouth, and Kerry and her new love interest are the ones to discover her. Heather's family owns a menstrual products company and their products feature heavily in the story and in the various murders that take place. I really liked Kerry and Annie and found their friendship really authentic for teenage besties. I also thought the writing was good, and there were some really funny moments. But overall, I was just screaming internally at these two to stop investigating, especially as more bodies turn up.

When trying to kiss the hot new guy, Kerry finds a dead body. Mood. Killer. Not how her first kiss or first high school party should be going.

Dead bodies are no fun.

Especially when it’s the most popular girl’s best friend murdered and you’re working with said popular girl - Heather - to figure out who has been cyberbullying her. Oh, did I mention she was murdered at Heathers? With a Menstrual cup stuffed in her mouth?

The police think it’s an accident, but BFF Anne (and a reluctant Kerry) are on the case to find the Menstrual Murderer before someone else dies.

I swear this book had me on edge and ranting that they BETTER not be the murderer. Find out who the Menstrual Murderer really is in Murder on a School Night

I enjoyed this book very much!! I was given a copy from NetGalley to my excitement and I jumped right in. It had a perfect amount of comedy and suspense that in enjoy in a thriller/scary book. Had a good amount of twists and turns and a good selection of suspects. I enjoyed the friendship between the two main characters and the love interest was perfect. Reminded me a bit of the Scream tv series which I loved. Will definitely be checking out more books from this author. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book in advance.

DNFd
I couldn’t get through the tone or voice of the story. It felt very cringy. May be a great book for someone else. Not me.

this was a funny murder thriller with an element of comedy

thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of this book!

Blurb is what caught my eye because it sounded really good. So I took a chance on this book and I'm so happy I did. I abostly loved this book. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommended this book. 5 star book. Already told a few people that they need to read this book.

In a sea of quirky feminist murder books, this one didn't stand out to me enough. Aside from the weird murder weapons, nothing about this was memorable.

Two best friends find themselves trying to solve the murder of a popular classmate... via menstrual products... but as more bodies drop, they closer they get to becoming victims themselves. Kerry and Annie are best friends and huge fans of solving mysteries. When they are asked to find out why the most popular girl in school, Heather, is receiving texts messages from a person claiming to be her dead father, they soon find themselves attending a party... only to then stumble upon the dead body of one of Heather’s best friends. Everyone is a suspect, including Heather’s ex cheating boyfriend, her friend group, and the mysterious and cute new boy in town who just happens to be crushing on Kerry. Kerry and Annie now find themselves joining Heather’s friend group in order to try and narrow down the suspect but more bodies begin to drop and finding the real menstrual killer is going to be difficult. Can they catch the killer before they end up on the list of dead bodies? This was a funny and odd read, like it definitely was such a unique premise and the whole killer thing was definitely not what you would expect. There was some cute romance, some funny moments, and overall, it was a good read for fans of quirky mysteries.

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*