Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This book was not for me. I struggled to finish it. None of the characters were very likable. The hardest part was figuring out what was the screenplay and what actually happened. Especially at the end it got even more confusing. Not at all what I was expecting from the description of the book.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for sending me an ARC copy for an honest review.

Emily’s friend Vanessa disappeared 15 years ago on a trip to their friends wine house. Years later her friends and her come back to remember Vanessa, but secrets start coming out.

Was this a great thriller in my own opinion no. It wasn’t very dark and the twist was just ok. Some stuff like I wish was drawn out and more dark was just quickly skimmed over. Then there were parts I just wanted to skip over. I got bored some parts and would have to put the book down to read something else.

Once it finally got going about 80% then it started getting good. I did enjoy the parts that were written like they were a movie script. The ending was a great tie up to the story as well.

Emily is a successful screenwriter living in LA but is still haunted by the disappearance of her friend Vanessa 15 years ago. When she sees someone who looks eerily similar to Vanessa in a cafe one day, it sparks memories of her past and a desire to finally figure out the truth. Emily and her college friends Brittany, Paige, and Lydia, have a girls trip reunion at Brittany’s family winery, the last place Vanessa was seen alive, to find closure regarding Vanessa’s disappearance. Emily uses the information she learns from her friends to write a screenplay to tell the story of what really happened 15 years ago.

I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book and the main character being a screenwriter. The story is told through Emily’s POV but after each chapter there are excerpts from the screenplay she was writing about the disappearance of her friend Vanessa and I thought it provided a unique structure for the story. But while this was an interesting element, it sometimes got a little confusing keeping track of what was actually happening and the excerpts interrupted the flow of the book at times. I thought the writing was great but the characters weren’t fleshed out enough and I found it difficult to connect with any of them. I didn’t love the reveals or the ending, which brought my rating down, but I am interested to read more from this author in the future! I recommend this book for readers who enjoy popcorn thrillers, toxic female friendships, and books featuring writers.

**Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC!**

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC!

I read Jilly Gagnon's first adult book "All Dressed Up" through NetGalley as my first eARC and was thrilled to get the opportunity to read her second early as well. This thriller was twisty and played up the ominous elements of the cliff that the 15 year old crime and the current events took place on. I found the story to be overall well paced and the motivations of the characters kept me guessing throughout. I found it interesting that a good portion of the story was told through a film script and while I found it mostly clever and fitting (especially due to our MC) it did become distracting at times. I believe that Gagnon was using it so that we as the reader would be second guessing what was fact and fiction, a theme that played out til the end, but I'm not sure if it worked completely. Overall I found this thriller to be a good friendship thriller that got a bit repetitive at times, but kept me reading til the end.

Awesome. Hooked me from the first chapter. Great plot, characters, storyline, everything. So so good. Highly recommend. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I’m kind of oscillating between 3-3.5 stars honestly. I LOVE the idea of the screenplay in between the chapters. However I did feel like the story was a bit simplistic sometimes? Character motivations felt very weak and I didn’t really buy into their decisions. This book is quick and pretty straightforward though, and the characters gave me a big White Lotus vibe while I read, so I think fans of the show might enjoy this story.

Emily dreads signing off to write for another year of a mind numbing show and thinking writing a screenplay might be her ticket out of her seemingly dead-end job. She is convinces her old college friends to reconvene at a remote winery to discuss the disappearance of the 5th friend, Vanessa. Vanessa was the step sister to the very wealthy Brittany and her appearance now might cause some issues with wills.... It's a perfectly spooky story with the women sniping at each other and clues from the fifth friend appearing without notice.

Is Vanessa still alive? A great little twisty thriller!
#RandomHouse #ScenesoftheCrime #JillyGagnon

How many whodunit books have a group ìsolated in an eerie place where someone is the killer? Plenty. But this one is different. First, all of the ladies at the winery have plausible back stories, and could easily be the guilty party. And then there's the fictionalized version of Emily's screenplay interspersed between the factual parts that makes it even more fun. It was a quick read for me, because I got caught up in the flow of the story.

The title, cover, and plot of this book were intriguing and I liked the idea of old friends having a reunion with mysteries and secrets. This is a decent read but not as good as I hoped it would be. I would recommend this for mystery/suspense fans, but particularly for fans of screenwriting. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Holy smokes, I banged through this in one day!

A very twisty thriller told in a few timelines that merged spectacularly. I love books about friends with secrets that come back to bite years later and this one was done superbly!

Five stars...all day!

A group of five girls go on spring break one come back with four. After the tragic disappearance and presumed death of their best friend vanessa, the four remaining girls start to drift apart, haunted by their own secrets and the worry that they played a part in vanessa’s death. Fifteen years later, Emily is working as a writer in Hollywood on both a dead end sitcom and a dead end manuscript about what actually happens that night, and decides she needs closure and to get to the bottom of it so she can finally piece it all together. The four former friends return to the cabin for a weekend and everything starts to unravel for everyone.

Overall loved this. It felt very Ruth Ware/Gillian Flynn with all the suspense and interpersonal drama. Especially liked the tie in with Emily including snippets of the script, and did NOT see the ending coming in that last paragraph. I think Lydia’s character could have used a little more development and explanations on all the girls relationships with vanessa. 4.5/5

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon started slowly for me and it took until the 3rd chapter to get my interest.
The storyline became more interesting, as it became more complex with Emily, Brittany, Vanessa, and Lydia, the main characters.
It wasn’t until the middle of the book that I became invested in the story, and was reading each page with anticipation.
The devil is in the details at the Scenes of the Crime, of how one of them was killed, and which one might hold the key to why.

I was a big fan of All Dressed Up so I was excited to get an early copy of the authors new book. This novel also has a gimmick (which I don’t intend perjorarivitly). Each chapter begins as traditional narrative but ends with a version of the same story being told in script form.

The story centers around four friends reuniting at a winery 15 years after their college friend disappeared mysteriously. Emily has gathered them together for ‘closure’ or maybe just to find inspiration for the scripts she’s writing? It took me a little bit to get into the book, but I did enjoy it. It was fun to see two versions of the story play out and the commonalities between them.

I do admit to having some questions about the one particular point of view based on the ending, but it didn’t hold me back from liking the book.

4 ⭐️

This is a very fun and fast thriller about old friends coming together because a friends that I thought was dead might not be *wink* *wink* ( I thought I was hilarious).

Are main characters a screenwriter so half of the book is told through screen plays retailing what happened in the past, which was an aspect that I’ve never seen in books but I love. The only downside is I was enjoying the past more than the present until a certain point. at the end of the book I was really into what was going on but at the beginning I did not care about the story as much.

No matter what this was still a book that I read in one day and I would recommend it for anyone asking for a recommendation for thrillers. I’m excited to read more from this author.

Thank you so much to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me too read this book early.

thank you to Random House/Ballantine for sending me an arc of this in exchange for an honest review.


This is basically like an adult version of Pretty Little Liars and i couldn't put it down. I loved every character and how each of them were toxic and the writing was fantastic. this story is told in a mixed media kind of format so you get the basic book format and then the "script" format that the main character Emily is writing.

I highly recommend this!

3.5 stars

Jilly Gagnon is becoming a must read for me. This book was very engaging and full of suspense. I didn’t love or hate the format, it was just different. Overall this was a great fast paced and twisty novel.

Heart pounding thriller that left me on the edge of my seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Definitely one of the best books this year.

SCENES OF THE CRIME
BY: JILLY GAGNON

About 4.5 Stars!

This novel was eerie, edgy and spooky throughout most of it, and I said to myself as I was reading: Why do I keep reading thrillers and scaring myself? I guess that I am sometimes more in the mood for it than others. Or as the saying goes--why do I keep doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different outcome?, which is the definition of insanity. This was creepy perhaps because of its remote location. This definitely had a sense of atmospheric Gothic vibes that takes place in a millionaire's cliff side Winery. It certainly isn't a new idea, but there was something about this one, that gave me goose bumps, and was also chilling.

Also, not a new idea or trope featuring originality. The idea of a reunion of four out five friends getting together, who were inseparable during College, getting together fifteen years later to find closure regarding the missing fifth one's untimely death. The one that's not in attendance is named Vanessa. Her cousin is the one hosting this get together. The narrator is a screenwriter named Emily. I liked Emily, and found her to be the nicest one there. Emily feels as if she is in a dead end job, having made some promotions working for a production company in Los Angeles. The young woman hosting this retreat is sort of hard to relate to, or perhaps I'm influenced by Emily's description of her as being a bit of a snob. Emily describes another one of the women attending named Paige, who is a follower of the host. Lydia is the one who Emily feels most comfortable with, although she is the quiet one, sitting off to the side, just taking everything in, but not really participating.

The novel does have a dual timeline which flashes back fifteen years ago, alternating with the present day setting. I thought that the format was different, which upon reflection read just like a script would, but I just went with it. Two of the four of these young women feel responsible for their dead friend Vanessa's demise. So at first, when someone said, I killed Vanessa. I said to the author: why are you telling me so soon, Jilly Gagnon? I don't want to know who murdered her, yet. The revelation
is made in private- only to the reader. Then a different young woman did the same thing. This admission, from at least two, of the four individuals, who were attending this reunion, feels guilt for killing Vanessa. I was grateful that I didn't know. I was glad that I wasn't told who did it. There is plenty of drinking wine, and enjoying good food going on since they arrived. They each have the choice to pick their own rooms, which are all very plush.

The following morning they are all a bit hung over from overdoing it, drinking too many glasses of wine, and they meet in the huge kitchen for coffee. Emily and the woman who owns the Winery decide to visit the chic resort town. The host offers to pay for Emily to accompany her to the local spa, but Emily declines, saying that she wants to check out the used bookstore. When they both return to the Winery, the host tells the two young women who stayed behind, that Emily went to the Salvation Army.

I left out that during the night before, after all four women go to their separate bedrooms to sleep, Emily hears a blood curdling scream. She gets out of bed, and follows the host down into the basement where there are tunnels that lead underground to interconnected caves. They lead out to the ocean, or a huge drop down from a cliff. Nothing is mentioned by Emily to the host of her following the host. The other strange thing to occur is that Paige gets a paper that she wrote during their college years, left on her bed, of someone else's work, who she secretly copied passing it off as her own written work, without citing the author, that was not given credit, that is punishable by expulsion. That's one of the first things we are all taught never to do, which freaks her out, because it's supposed to be a secret. The host gets left on her bed, Vanessa's mother's ring, that Vanessa wore on a chain, that she never took off, which was why the host screamed, which led Emily to follow her to the basement, where the wine is stored. There are a lot of things happening that the reader is only aware of. These women don't communicate, which made me wonder--why on earth agree with this reunion? What kind of friends were they?

Who is responsible for leaving these tokens from their past? Why are these four young women gathering in honor of Vanessa, when they don't seem to particularly care for one another? This was certainly suspenseful, and held my interest. Besides being edgy and scary, something happens that I never saw coming, and it is an important discovery that I will guarantee nobody who reads this will see it coming or predict it. When the author reveals the major twist, I was still invested deeply, but admit this grew less spooky for me.

There is just no way to predict what that big twist is. There is a whole lot of action to come. If you like thrillers this is one you will not want to miss. I know I have suggested that this trope has been done many times before, the thing that I said is impossible to guess, makes this worthy of reading. In that sense it's definitely original. I guess to be fair to the author, that this is actually a 4.5 Star reading experience. In the past I would award it the full Five Stars, but I am attempting to give Five Stars with more reserve. This is just me being more reserved, with my ratings. I feel that I was automatically giving that rating out if I really liked something, so I am taking a pause from that mindset. Don't get me wrong, this was well written, totally held my interest, dark & Suspenseful, I totally recommend it to thriller & Mystery fans. I think 4.5 Stars is indicative of this being Great writing of which I am grateful that I was fortunate to read. I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading this talented Author again.

Publication Date: September 5, 2023

Thank you to Net Galley, Jilly Gagnon, and Random House Publishing Group-- Ballantine. Bantam for generously sharing your DRC with me in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#ScenesoftheCrime #JillyGagnon #RandomHousePublishingGroupBallantineBantam #NetGalley

This was mysterious and thrilling and even a little eerie for me at times. I enjoyed the atmosphere and writing style and was sucked in from the start. First time reading anything by this author and I think it was fantastic!

I love a good fiction | mystery | suspense book and I’m a sucker for a great story about a get together gone mysteriously wrong but this one just didn’t hit that ‘got to have more’ note for me. I love good twists and turns that leave me turning the pages one after the other & anticipating the next and guessing what was going to happen but I sadly didn’t get that from this.

I did love all the characters, I felt like I could relate to their relationships to real life girlfriend relationships and the screenplay pages were fantastic and I love that concept. I would have enjoyed more of those but this was still wonderful!

I think that overall this is a great mystery book for a weekend away or a fun book club read. Simply because it didn’t hit that craving for me in the right spots does not mean it won’t for others, this was OVERALL good and aside from it all, I will absolutely purchase it for my own personal collection. I enjoyed the ending and I will absolutely be reaching for Jilly’s other work but I gave this particular book a 4-star.

A huge thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to provide my honest feedback of 'Scenes of The Crime’.