“Scenes of the Crime” is a thriller by Jilly Gagnon. This book has a dual timeline - one 15 years ago and one in present day. The book follows four women and what happened at a girls’ trip.

This book was an odd one. I believe that the relationship between all the women was toxic to degrees that seemed plausible but rather frustrating at the same time. I never felt reading this book that any of these women had any depth. I don’t think I’ll remember much about this book in about a week - other than it taking along the Oregon coast and winery caves with passages to the ocean (that part I found rather interesting, must admit). I did like the parts that were written as a screenplay - including the reader’s comments. I’m going to give this book four stars because it did hold my attention, was an easy/quick read, and I did like the overall style, but it’s really more like a 3.5 star read for me overall.

I was so damn excited to start this impossible to put down mystery.

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon is a suspenseful, compelling, and an unforgettable mystery.

I was invested in this story from the first chapter.
This story was written with a unique and fast-paced voice.
I absolutely loved it. I couldn't put this down. I read it on the edge of my seat.
It was so breathtakingly intense that I was absolutely spellbound by the crazy mystery and interesting characters.
The plot was intriguing and kept me guessing until the very end.
The characters were well-developed and complex, and I found myself invested in this story.
Overall an adrenaline fueled thriller of a disappearance by re-creating their fateful final girls’ trip in this riveting locked-room mystery.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Random House, Ballantine & Bantam for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I loved it! This author really knows how to spin a tale! This is a great mystery that reveals its characters in the present, the past, and in a screenplay format. Every single one of them in this group of friends has a deep dark secret that they never told each other let alone the police. Very jittery. Very nice descriptions as well.

This is the story of a group of friends from college reuniting 15 years after the disappearance of one of their own under suspicious circumstances. The main character Emily writes for a popular tv show and convince the remaining friends to meet so she can get details as she wants to write a script on the disappearance. Honestly, this was very hard for me to get into. The relationships were pretty toxic (which we all know can be with women). Maybe mid way through a few thing happened that hooked me, and I ended up finishing the rest of the book that day. I didn’t love the way that it ended but overall once it got fast it was an easy read. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an ARC copy for an honest review.

Very well written. The author grabs the readers attention right away and makes it hard to want to put the book down to enter the real world again 😁. Great who done it story that has you guessing the whole time.

Told between the past and present perspective and using a screenplay to add a little twist, Jilly Gagnon takes you back to the scene of a crime that happened 15 years prior.

15 years earlier on Spring Break, a break that should have been perfect Vanessa goes missing and Emily believes she was the last one to see her alive. After seeing someone who looks like Vanessa 15 years later Emily tries to get the girls back together again so she can finally figure out what happened to Vanessa and so she can finish a screenplay that she is trying to write about what happened that night.

Overall, this story was okay. The back and forth and the inclusion of the screenplay scenes took some getting used to and most of the characters were quite unlikable. I did enjoy the mystery and the final outcome, but it was a little tedious getting to that reward.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.

Scenes of the Crime - Jilly Gagnon

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

A screenwriter who can't seem to write a screenplay about a pivotal event in her life (when one of her friends went missing) gathers her old gang back together in an attempt to gain motivation to finally write the screenplay.

This novel just didn't do it for me, although the premise was interesting I found my mind wandering. I just couldn't engage with the characters enough to care who went missing and why.

I loved this book so much! I really didn’t know what it was about when I started reading it, but I quickly was obsessed! The characters are well developed, and I couldn’t help but love them all!

Overall this was an OK read for me. It was a bit of a slower start but I kept going and it picked up a bit more for me. I'm glad that I got the chance to read it early and will probably pick up another book by this author at some point. I enjoyed the characters the most. Thank you to the publisher for my early copy of this book!

Scenes of the Crime is just full of surprises! The premise is simple, four friends who went to school together are meeting up to reenact a trip that they went on years ago where the fifth girl in their group disappeared. The author did a great job of setting the scene in a a remote winery on the Oregon coast. I found this thriller to be a good friendship thriller that got a bit repetitive at times, but kept me reading til the end. An advance reader copy was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I will be honest - I DNF-ed this book at 50%.

I adore the writing style and loved the prose-like way Gagnon writes. It felt like I was reading classic literature with some of her descriptions, which I love. And the setting! A breathtaking winery backed against the sea sounded so gorgeous and relaxing, and every time she peppered in a new detail about the setting, I found myself wishing I could vacation there.

So why’d I put it down? Two main reasons that weren’t my cup of tea: the pacing, and the characters. At 50% of the way in, I still felt like nothing had happened to advance the plot. Normally I’d keep going because the characters make me want to know what happens, but I found this group of women insufferable. All they seemed to do was make snarky comments to each other, and it was exhausting to read the long threads of dialogue that was mostly insults.

I would definitely give her other books a chance; she seems like a very talented author and I loved the alternating screenplays sprinkled in between chapters. Definitely very unique! This one sadly just wasn’t for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! This book will be available everywhere in September 2023.

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon.
It is a little wordy for me so it is a slow start.
Emily is a successful sit-com writer/producer but hates it. She is also haunted by a tragedy 15 years earlier during Spring Break at college. A friend went missing. She doesn’t remember if she was involved because she was so drunk and it has been haunting her. She sees someone who looks so much like the missing Vanessa that it starts her down a path to find the truth. The four remaining friends (not so much anymore) get together at the same location where Vanessa vanished to remember her but Emily has an ulterior motive - she wants to find the truth. And write a book about it.
Each chapter opens setting the stage like a script…not sure I like that. It can be a little confusing.
The characters are hard to like - so self absorbed! Even Emily who is writing the story just want to know what happened because she wants to write about it to jumpstart her career.
I was glad I stuck with the book because it has interesting twists and turns but I would have enjoyed it better if I had liked any of the friends. Even the author calls the relationships toxic in the acknowledgments. Worth reading.

None of the characters are likeable and it didn't get interesting until about the last 30% of the book. The whole movie script vs. what actually happened was a good idea I guess but I also think it made it more confusing. I get why it was set up with it interspersed throughout the story, but I almost would have liked to see the movie version as it's own (shortened down) epilogue.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a pretty good story. I liked how the phone ships were incredibly multifaceted and showed that women can both love and hate each other at the same time. The writer definitely threw me off with the ending, I wouldn’t have expected that in 1 million years! I love that the women had a history together and that history impacted the present. All in all, a solid suspense book!

Emily has worked her way up to being a producer on a TV show. The show, she feels, is trash. Very successful trash that has run for several seasons, but trash none the less. And while she sits in her favorite coffee shop editing a script for the show she sees a ghost. Not the transparent kind or one that goes ‘Boo!’, but a ringer for one of her college roommates who disappeared 15 years ago, never to be seen since. And part of what rattles her so is that she, Emily, was so drunk the night of her friend’s disappearance she has no memory of what actually happened but she fears she may have drunkenly killed her friend.

For quite a while Emily has been working on a screenplay about her friends disappearance hoping that it might jog her memory. But after seeing her ghost she decides to gather her college roommates at the country house where they were when the girl went missing and see if they can find any clues.

The story is well told skipping back and forth between screenplay and current events cleverly keeping reader interest. I will be looking for more of this author’s books.

This is the first book I’ve read by Jilly Gagnon. I truly enjoyed the story, there were plenty twists. It was a bit difficult for me to get used to the script-style parts but that’s prolly because I’ve never read anything of a similar style. I’ve read books with podcast type portions & was a bit more comfortable with those but again, this script style writing was an absolute first & May be something I can get used to in the future. However, as I said, the story is wonderful, the characters so clearly written you can picture (and intensely dislike some!). Great read, solid 3.6 stars.

This novel fell flat for me for a couple of reasons. I wasn’t crazy about the “screenwriting” scenes. They seemed disjointed from the story and felt too much like reading the actual working script of a play. Also, I did not identify with any of the main characters; while everyone seemed to have a hidden agenda, their stories were uninteresting and I really didn’t care to know more about them. The big plot twist at the end was far too obvious and the ending seemed to be expressly written for that proverbial “screenplay”.

Fifteen years ago Emily’s friend Vanessa disappeared on a girl’s weekend away at a winery. Present day Emily is getting all the remaining friends back together at the winery to try to figure out what happened to Vanessa that night. Secrets come out and trouble arises.
This was an exciting story that I finished quickly. Thanks NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for this ARC that will be released September 5, 2023!

This was a very fun mystery/thriller! I'm giving it 4 stars, because at times I felt like it wasn't completely served by the story being told both as a novel and as a film script. I do think it was an interested tool, since it made it hard to tell what was real and what was fabricated, and the truth became more clear as the story went on. That said, it was also a bit frustrating, not knowing what to trust. It took me a little while to understand how the story narrative was coming together.

All this to say, I thought it was fresh, if somewhat predictable, for a thriller story. I can see how it would easily translate to a tv or film, and I really enjoyed reading it! Fun characters and an interesting, creative format.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam for the advanced copy!

Fun and fast thriller with some twists! The story is told in 2 timelines — 5 college friends on spring break, and 4 women pulled together 15 years later. Our protagonist, Emily, is an LA screenwriter, so today’s version of the story is told via screenplay. I don’t always love a converging timeline, but the screenplay variation worked here.

It took me a little while to piece everything together, which added a fun element of surprise towards the middle of the book. Personally, I think everything "clicked" a little too early in the story, but overall, I did enjoy this read!