While I was excited about a thriller set during a girls' weekend in the mountains, this one fell flat for me. As I read, I kept waiting for something to happen & I felt like it never did. I thought much of the plot was fairly obvious and when the final twist came, while it was a bit surprising, it was easy to see how we arrived at this conclusion. I was also unable to connect with any of the characters, which also may have influenced how I felt. But if you're a thriller read, it's worth picking up!

A very quick and easy thriller that's perfect for the fall season!

The writing style is super unique with multiple pov's in the present tense as well as the past tense, which is actually a screenplay. Our main character is a writer for a national sitcom so while you're getting the backstory, you're actually reading a screenplay she's written for a movie. I hadn't read a book like that before so I really liked it that piece and wanted to make sure I mentioned it.

First off, I want to say that the book cover is absolutely beautiful. A good story of five friends that take a trip to a Winery. One goes missing. Fifteen years later and the remaining four girls reunite to recreate the night their friend went missing. Will they discover what happened that night?

The book was slow moving, but an enjoyable read.

What a great suspenseful read! I highly recommend this book! Set aside time because once you start you won’t want to stop!

For fifteen years Emily Fischer has lived with the thought that she may have been responsible fo her friend Vanessa’s death. Working on the script notes for a sitcom in a coffee shop, she is sure that she has seen Vanessa. In an effort to discover what really happened all those years ago she calls on the other girls who were present at the Oregon winery for a school break. A memorial reunion is planned at the same winery, which now belongs to Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin. The wine flows freely and not everyone has fond memories of Vanessa. She had a way of making you feel special, but she was also manipulative. Each of the girls are hiding secrets from the past. Paige had an argument with Vanessa shortly before she disappeared. Accidentally pushing her off a dock, Vanessa never resurfaced and Paige believes that she caused her death. Brittany met her in the caves below the winery, where family issues led to an accident, leaving Brittany to believe that she was guilty. When items belonging to Vanessa begin to surface the girls confront each other and accusations fly.

Emily has been working on a screenplay built around their school years and the events leading to Vanessa’s disappearance, but she needs to know how it will end. Jilly Gagnon alternates scenes from her script with the actual events leading up to the reunion and a final confrontation in the winery’s caves. It is a scene where one of the girls will not survive. This is a suspenseful who done it that keeps you guessing right up to the very end. I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for providing this book for my review.

This review will be posted on September 6, 2023 to: https://instagram.com/amandas.bookshelf

This was a solid locked room-style mystery. Four college friends reuite at a remote coastal winery in Oregon. The winery was the site of a mutual friend's disappearance more than a decade ago. One of the friends, a screenwriter in L.A., wants to solve the murder and turn the story into a movie. Traditional narrative prose alternates with a script narrative. At first, I thought the script narrative was a bit gimmicky. But, while I didn't like the device, it kind of grew on me. It furthered the notion of unreliable characters and how quickly the truth or reality could be altered for fiction's sake. While the author super briefly touched on the toxic relationships in the friend group, I wished it had been further included in the actual narrative. #ScenesOfTheCrime Rating: somewhere between 😐 / meh, it was ok AND 🙂 / liked it
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This book is scheduled for publication on September 5, 2023. Thank you Bantam and @penguinrandomhouse for providing me this digital ARC via @NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This didn’t hold my interest. I feel like I just read a book with the same plot and this was nothing new, unfortunately. I appreciate the originality of adding in the script as the backstory, but I didn’t enjoy reading in that format.

How many times have I read this book? So many times. Is there a checklist for authors who wish to write a “thriller”? I feel like there is no originality in the genre right now. I just could not care about this same exact plot and flat characters again.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

It's an old story, told many times and many ways, but the ending is usually not the same, and this one certainly isn't. Five college girlfriends go for Spring Break to a remote winery on the Oregon coast which is owned by the family of two of them. But, at the end of the week, only four return.

So, what happened to Vanessa? Is she dead, lost to the wild waters off the coast, as is generally believed? Three of the girls believe she is dead, and each of them thinks she had something to do with her death. But they never talk about it together, so no one knows.

Fifteen years later, one of the girls thinks she sees Vanessa in a coffee shop in LA. This makes her believe it is time to finally figure out what happened all that time ago, so she contacts the other three and they meet up at the same winery for a long weekend. During that time of drinking, squabbling like schoolgirls, and general weirdness, a lot of truths come out. Someone knows what happened and is leaving clues for each girl, letting them know that someone KNOWS.

This was a fast read - I finished it in two days - but I really wanted a little more meat. The girls, now women, were superficial and never really fleshed out. I had trouble feeling much of anything for any of them, and the alternating between the story and the movie script was confusing. I wasn't sure what was happening and what was being written for effect in a script.

This was a book about toxic people / friendships that was just ... Alot !

Tbh this book just didn't do it for me . The chapters were like 40 pages each & also I just really didn't care about anyone that much.
I'd say it was a 2.5 ⭐ but I'm gonna bump it up to a 3 ⭐ .

I'm a California girl , born in Burbank so I loved the setting . LOVED the mention of Porto's towards the end. That place ❤️
If u know , u know.

This was unique and interesting book. I liked the parts that were written like a movie script. The mystery was good. The twists and turns were unexpected. This was a fun mystery that is written uniquely. Special Thank You to Jilly Gagnon, Random House Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy prior to publication in exchange for an honest review

SCENES OF THE CRIME by Jilly Gagnon is a twisty mystery of a girl’s weekend gone awry and the underlying relationships that led up to the event. Fifteen years prior, five college girlfriends get together for a girl’s weekend away at a remote winery on the Oregon coast. On that trip, Vanessa, the hub of the group, goes missing without a trace. Years later, Vanessa’s close friend Emily is still haunted by her disappearance. Stuck in her dead-end gig as a screenwriter, Emily thinks that if she could just tell the true story of what happened to Vanessa it would kick-start a new era of her career. If only she could remember the details of that fateful night. Emily orchestrates a reunion of the remaining four at the same winery, now owned by own of them, to try to uncover the truth. Everyone there hides secrets and none of them are reliable narrators now. Alternately between past and present, and interspersing scenes from Emily’s in-progress screenplay, secrets are revealed and long-buried grudges are unburied. Filled with friendship drama and a few interesting twists, the story kept my attention, but still had a few flaws that tripped me up. It was definitely an interesting premise. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read and review an early copy.

Screenplay or story?
A mystery/whodunnit involving a group of "toxic" friendships. The book within a screenplay sometimes gets confusing and rattles on with an excess common to a soap opera. This cautionary tale of supposed family/friends that manipulate every situation is frightening - every character has an agenda
If modern-day friendships are like these -you'd be safer alone

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. I was super excited for this thriller based on the premise but wound up being just medium on it. It has a lot of classic thriller tropes - toxic female friendships, fuzzy memory due to substance abuse, and a remote "locked room" style location. The description had me anticipating a more original thriller. I thought the interspersed screenplay sections were an interesting touch. Definitely a fast read.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bantam of Random House and the author Jilly Gagnon for advance copy for honest review.

Happy Pub Day!

This is a fun, twisty kind of book! Five girlfriends set out to a winery on the beautiful Oregon Coast. Everything is going great until one just up and disappears without a trace. Many years later, Emily thinks she sees her missing friend. This sparks interest in trying to figure out what really happened that night.. She builds a ruse, reuniting the girls to reconnect and to see who is holding onto secrets and try to get answers at - The Scene of the Crime.
4 stars recommend

do you have bad friends? well so does emily. holy moly so does emily. but it always that way. or was it? in this mystery by jilly gagnon, you'll be questioning if your memory is as good as you remember. if you'e the good friend. it's a testament to gagnon's writing that you want to know more about these women, even when they're being awful to each other. then it hits you with a twist. with eloquent writing, it's a must read for mystery fans. thanks to bantam for the arc!

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon

This story within a story from #PenguinRandomHouse and #NetGalley tells of a college friends’ reunion which goes wrong. Twice. It is pieced together intermittently with scenes created by attendee Emily who is a screenwriter. The story meshes with reality and her soon-to-be screenplay, which makes the title even more clever.

The ladies reunite after fifteen years to sort out the truth of what happened at their last gathering. It is a bit of a Housewives of … with three days of bickering, a lot of wine, questions and few answers.

I liked the author’s writing very much, but was disappointed with how long it took to get to the conclusion. The reader pretty much knows what happened, but so much additional information is added after the climax that it takes away the momentum.

I recommend this four star book for all mystery lovers.

Scenes of the Crime by Jilly Gagnon is the kind of book I really don’t like: people sitting around, rehashing, judging. In this case the people are a group of friends, fifteen years out of college, mostly successful in their own ways. Emily thinks she sees the dead girl/woman in a coffee shop and that prompts her to contact the other women who had been present that weekend, when she had disappeared. They agree to meet at the “scene of the crime,” the winery owned by one of them. There is animosity almost immediately but Emily hangs in, desperate to learn if she was somehow responsible for her friend’s death.

These were mostly not nice people, at least when they were together. The atmosphere was toxic from the beginning. Emily didn’t remember it being this bad when they were younger. The characters were interesting, pretty well-written, and like many women approaching middle age. One was married with children, one was gay and married, the others determinedly single. They appeared to be doing well in their respective professions. It was grueling, listening to them whine and accuse. For many this was an excellent read. For me, it was not.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Scenes of the Crime by Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #RandomHousePublishingGroupBallantine #JillyGagnon #ScenesOfTheCrime

Emily is the producer of a TV show. When she was in college, she had a group of friends and one of them, Vanessa, disappeared fifteen years ago.

Brittany and Vanessa were cousins but their grandmother favored Brittany and was very hard on Vanessa. The grandparents have now passed on and the will states that the grandmother left the Cliff’s Edge Winery to their granddaughters. With Vanessa gone, Brittany has become the owner and has been running the place. It is located at a remote place by the cliffs in Oregon.

As the group has not seen one another in many years, Brittany invites Emily, Lydia, and Paige for a long weekend to catch up with one another. It looks like they might have a good time until some sinister things start to happen. Could Vanessa actually be alive? If so, where has she been and why has she not come forward?

This book is written as if it’s a TV show which made it rather confusing and somewhat hard to keep up with. I think if it had been written differently, I would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately, this scenario made the book drag for me.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Synopsis: Fifteen years ago, Vanessa Morales vanished from a girls weekend at a remote Oregon winery. Today, Emily is a sitcom screenwriter with ambitions to tell the story of her friend’s disappearance. But first she must find out what really happened that night. Emily organizes a trip with her friends back to the winery to discover which of them is hiding the secret that could be the key to what happened to Vanessa.

Thoughts: I thought this book was really clever! The concept is original, and the format is different than anything I’ve read before - the story is told in a mix of present day and past, which excerpts of the main character’s in-process screenplay throughout. The format makes it intentionally hard to tell what is real and who to trust. The twists were unexpected, and I definitely didn’t see the big one coming. My favorite part was the atmospheric setting of an old winery on the Oregon coast. I did enjoy this book, but the resolution didn’t quite come together, and I felt like there were a few plot holes. I also would have enjoyed it a bit more if the characters had more depth or at least one of them was more likable. Overall a solid thriller with an interesting concept.

Read this if you like:
🎬 movie/tv scripts
🎬 girls trips
🎬 wineries
🎬 dual timelines
🎬 unreliable narrator