Thank you NetGalley! This is not my first book read by author Jessica Goodman and it won’t be my last. Another great read. I always enjoy a good dark academia type novel

The Meadowbrook Murders is a tense YA thriller that follows two teenage girls - Amy and Liz - as the navigate the aftermath of two brutal murders at their elite boarding school. I really enjoyed the dual perspectives, and especially loved Liz’s character, who’s a student journalist. The book does a great job of immersing the reader in the setting - a New England boarding school, where cliques and gossip and high school parties abound. While the book wasn’t quite as twisty as I thought it might be, I still didn’t guess the ending (I never do 🫣), and I read the book in a single day because I needed to know the end.

I really liked this book. Sometimes a good YA is just what I need to get me out of a slump. This one had a great plot, great setting, great characters. Full of twists and turns and a surprise ending.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this arc.

It’s not a secret that I’m a fan of mystery novels, murder mysteries in particular, so this book felt right up my alley. I mean, private school, scandalous murder, privileged kids (and a few not so privileged) living together with slack adult supervision, a killer loose among them seemed like the perfect premise for a great read.

Well, I was both right and wrong in my assumptions. The mystery was intriguing and discovering who the killer was, and why did they kill, was a good surprise, the kind one wants when reading a mystery novel. The problem, for me, was that getting to that point took a lot of willpower because this book starts slow, like a snail on a hot driveway kind of slow, and stays slow until well into its second half.

I reached about 25% of the book still hoping for something to happen, something else besides the parade of anguish teens adjusting to the reality of classmates having been murder. We get it, murder is a super traumatic event and these are kids facing it without escape, but still because characters with a point of view don’t engage in an active effort to investigate what happened, everything happening page after page feels more like staged drama than engrossing real-time events.

After realizing the super slow buildup would continue indefinitely, I then kept reading just wondering where is this going? My patience was rewarded with an increase in pace and a swift resolution, but by the time I got there my overall feeling was one of, “I don’t think this book was for me,” so take my comments with that grain of salt.

I would say that, if you’re looking for a thriller this is not one (by the mere definition of thrilling) but still remains a good murder mystery, with some good characterization and a few compelling moments, yet is worth remembering that things move slowly in this story, so if that’s not your cup of tea, perhaps this one is not for you.

Three and a half stars for me. Rounding down because the promised Dark Academia atmosphere wasn’t all that there, as it at times felt as if this was happening in a town more than within the walls of a boarding school.

I liked the setting of the Boarding school and thought the mystery of who killed Sarah and her boyfriends was full of twists and turns, and who the killer was, was a complete surprise. I thought the students acted their age, making dumb decisions left and right thinking they were doing the right thing.
The beginning of this was a bit slow on the build-up, we have the murder happen right away, but the next quarter or is just what happened after. It isn't until a bit before the halfway point that Amy and Liz start really looking into what happened and figuring out why someone might have wanted to hurt Amy and her boyfriend.

Things went pretty quickly after the halfway point, and I flew through it. It kept me guessing, and most of the twists we got were completely surprising keeping me on the edge of my seat about what was going to happen next.

Every now and again, I just crave a good YA murder mystery and even better, one that takes place at an English boarding school for peak academia vibes. This has all the vibes you’d want in an academia thriller, with a boarding school in New England taking place during fall. As a girl who craves fall all year round, this book hit. It’s books like these that keep the spirit of autumn alive, even in February.

One of the best parts of this book is that the killer was not super obvious. I think that’s one of the biggest things that determines whether a murder mystery is good or not, either making the killer harder to guess, or having a really good plot twist. And while this doesn’t have a plot twist, it also doesn’t make the killer obvious either. It’s pretty easy to narrow it down, but it never is obvious in who it is until the end.

Now to be a little critical, where this book is lacking is not fast enough of a buildup. By the time you’re 40% in, nothing much has happened except the aftermath of the murders and everyone adjusting to the mental and emotional fallouts of it. There’s not really any sort of investigation until you’re around halfway through, so you kind of wonder where the plot is going or how they’re even going to find the killer, since no one is really doing anything except going to class and coping. After that it does start to pick up, but it’s slow to get there.

While this is set in a boarding school, you don’t really get the academia feel you’d crave from a book like this. It’s not like I’d expect them to all dress is full uniform and walk around like they’re in hogwarts, but I cannot tell you how many times I literally forgot that this took place in a boarding school. That dark academia atmosphere I was craving just wasn’t there. But to be honest I’m not sure what she could’ve done differently to give this book the atmosphere it needed. There was nothing defining enough to give it the autumnal boarding school vibes I wanted. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this a lot. If you’re craving a good YA thriller, this one hits the spot and I’ll definitely read Jessica Goodman’s future books.

Thank you to Netgalley and GP Putnam for sending me an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

Thank you to Penguin Teen and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Jessica Goodman has become a staple YA thriller author for me because I love the way she writes about rich teens’ drama and layered friendship dynamics as the backbone for the murder mystery. While not my favorite of her books, her latest has plenty of the things I love about her work. This particular book is set at a boarding school, where Amy, one of the two main characters, wakes up to discover her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend have been murdered in their shared dorm suite. After her discovery, Amy gets reassigned to share a room with Liz, the editor of the school’s newspaper and the other main character. The girls couldn’t have less in common, and the point-of-view alternates between Amy and Liz as the girls learn to set aside their differences and work together to solve the murder. If you wished that Pretty Little Liars had been set in a boarding school or that Gossip Girl was more of a thriller, then this book may be right up your alley.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4/5 STARS

Genre: YA Thriller

Set in a New England boarding school, a student wakes up to find her roommate & her boyfriend murdered in the next room. When the evidence starts pointing towards her, she realizes it the killer has to be someone they know.

This is a fast paced thriller. Think a dark Gossip Girl. The chapters are really short, so you can fly through it. It was a little predictable but I like the way the story unfolded and the drama.

If you have read Jessica’s other books, you will enjoy this one too!

Thank you Penguin Teen for the ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an arc of this book. All opinions are completely my own.

This is a really solid YA mystery. This starts out with a bang, and we get straight into action. I really liked our main characters and what they each brought to the story. The setting was really interesting as well.

I lived how this was structured, and the quick pacing worked really well for me! The mystery was fun, and I liked all the twists and turns that came with it. I wish the end reveal wasn't as predictable as it ended up being for me, but that's mostly on me as a huge mystery lover. I could definitely see that if you don't read a lot of mysteries that you would be shocked by the reveal!

Overall, I really liked this and would recommend it to YA mystery lovers!

This book had the makings of a great mystery. Although I didn't immediately guess the ending I did want more twists and turns and shocks. It was a mediocre thriller. Pretty fast read.

"From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of They Wish They Were Us and The Counselors, comes a page-turning murder mystery set at a prestigious New England boarding school about the importance - and price - of telling the truth.

Secrets don't die.

It's the first week of senior year at Meadowbrook Academy. For Amy and her best friend Sarah, that means late-night parties at the boathouse, bike rides through their sleepy Connecticut town, and the crisp beginning of a New England fall.

Then tragedy strikes: Sarah and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in their dorm room. Now the week Amy has been dreaming about for years has turned into a nightmare, especially when all eyes turn to her as the culprit. She was Sarah's only roommate, the only other person there when she died - or so she told the police to cover for her own boyfriend's suspicious whereabouts. And even though they were best friends, with every passing day, Amy begins to learn that Sarah lied about a lot of things.

Liz, editor of the school newspaper and social outcast, is determined to uncover the truth about what happened on campus, in hopes her reporting will land a prestigious scholarship to college. As Liz dives deeper into her investigation, the secrets these murdered seniors never wanted out come to light. The deeper Liz digs, the messier the truth becomes - and with a killer still on campus, she can't afford to make any mistakes.

The Meadowbrook Murders is a gripping mystery about the inextricable way power, privilege, and secrets are linked, and how telling the truth can come at a deadly price."

There's nothing more deliciously dark academia than a murder mystery at an elite school in New England.

The Meadowbrook Murders is a solid YA dark academia thriller set at an east coast boarding school. The story will keep you wanting to turn the page. I figured out the killer in advance and I didn't even care. That's always a good sign.

Thank you to Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers and Netgalley for the electronic advanced copy.

I think this author writes good YA thrillers but it just wasn’t for me. I have been very picky this new year.

🔪┊ “ forever, my life will be divided into two halves, a before and after, one with sarah and one, horrifically, without. ”

The Meadowbrook Murders is a dual POV mystery novel, switching between Amy, the roommate and best friend of one of the victims, and Liz, the editor-in-chief of the high school's newspaper. The story takes place at Meadowbrook Academy, and 'impossible-to-get-into boarding school,' just as school as about to start up again.

I liked Amy's inner thoughts and how she dealt with the murder of her best friend! I honestly felt bad for her through all of the stuff she went through, from being brought in for questioning to being accused of the murders by her supposed friends. Liz, on the other hand, was a typical journalist for most of the novel; that is to say, she only cared about getting the 'story' and didn't really care about who she hurt. It was only around the 70% point that she realized how to handle her journalism with grace, which was unfortunately a little too late for me to come to like her. I didn't really buy their friendship by the end of it; while it makes sense that there would be some level of understand between them after everything, I don't see their friendship lasting. Overall, I would have been fine if it had just been Amy's POV.

I thought the mystery was an interesting one, though I was able to figure out who the killer was and what their motive was early on. It was definitely entertaining to watch the mystery unfold, however!

This was a very solid thriller. It drew me in straight away and was fast paced and very gripping. I enjoyed getting chapters from both Amy and Liz and liked how they slowly developed trust and friendship. The plot made me theorize multiple times throughout the book and second guess my theories, in kept me interested the whole time, 4.5 stars!

I knew who the killer was very early on but it was a fun ride! I wished I liked the characters a little more though!

The setting is a boarding school, two teen kids are killed, the roommate Amy doesn’t hear a thing, but she discovers them. Now there is a hunt for the killer, and these kids are keeping secrets. This book, kept me on edge, I needed to keep reading, because there was a lot of things that did not make sense, but it was so juicy at the same time, because there was so many secrets that gets revealed, and you think you know who did it but it’s not who you think it is. That sentence was intense. I apologize for that, lol…. Then we have Ami‘s new roommate Liz who is the editor of their school newspaper, and everyone is trying to stay away from her…. It was a hot mess. The end went by really fast and it was action packed, but I will say this a page turner.

This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

A very quick read about murder of 2 students in the dorm and all the twist and turns (and secrets) that will unravel who the killer is. Not one of my favorite reads but could appeal to many who like Dark Academia Thrillers. I'm not in agreement with the comparison to Holly Jacksons Good Girls Guide to Murder. Because of the comparison I was a bit let down.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review


Set for publishing February 4,2025

I love a dark academia book and really wanted to love this book. While I did like it, I didn’t love it. It had the potential to be fantastic, but there were some plot points that were quite developed enough and the pacing drug in some points. Even with those issues, it was still an enjoyable read.