Very rarely do I find a perfected book - from Characters, plot, pacing...it was all *chef's kiss**. This is my first Julie Soto book, but will not be my last.

Lots of twist and turns. Kept the pages turning! Sometimes forgot this was YA enjoyed the writing! Shocking at times. Didn’t love the paranormal elements.

Thank you @wednesdaybooks & Julie Soto for my #gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first Julie Soto book, and I can honestly say—I get the hype! I was hooked from the very beginning. The Thrashers centers around an exclusive friend group that holds serious influence over their school. Everyone wants to be part of their world—but at what cost?

When Emily Mills, a girl who desperately wants to be a Thrasher winds up dead, who will take the blame for it? And will the Thrashers take a good hard look at how their actions affect others?

This book tackles heavy themes while still playing with classic teen stereotypes. There were plenty of twists and turns, and for a long time, I couldn’t predict how things would unfold. There were so many secrets kept - especially between the Thrashers - that you never quite knew who was at fault for everything that happened.

I especially liked Jodi (Zack Thrasher’s best friend) - she felt relatable. She was a good friend who was desperately trying to keep her place in her exclusive friend group. She never felt like she fit in, but she tried hard to.

The friendships in this book were toxic in so many ways, yet also incredibly compelling. They were complex and the loyalty they had for each other was intense. They were like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. This book was giving pretty little liars vibes in a great way - but with significantly better writing.

Overall, this was a great YA thriller full of dark secrets, complicated friendships, and harsh twists and turns. I highly recommend it!

Wow. The way I could not put this down once I got into it! It was kind of giving me Pretty Little Liars meets Gossip Girl Meets Final Destination? And I was eating it upppp.
I love J so much, I don’t care. I will be impatiently waiting for book 2!

Happy thriller Thursday! Talk about a thriller with all of my favourite things… YA, has high school/campus settings, full of secrets, revenge, and tons of drama and gossip?? I think this was the perfect book written for me!

The Thrashers are a groups of students that are all friends. Zack Thrasher, the leader, Julian, Lucy and Paige are all rich kids that love attention. Then there is Jodi, who doesn’t really fit in with the group, but is included because she is Zack’s childhood best friend.

Then there is newcomer Emily Mills, who wants so badly to be apart of the group. When she suddenly dies and her journal surfaces, everyone is looking at The Thrashers to figure out what is going on.

I really enjoyed this one and the story it took me on, it was hard to put down and definitely kept the pages turning!

my rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

🥳pub day: May 6th

this was an engaging, fascinating, hilarious (darkly), and shocking good time of a story!!!! I couldn’t put it down, I had to know what was going to happen next! and now that it’s over I STILL NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!! I don’t know how to review more than this without spoiling, just know I loved it and I need more!!!!

thank you for the arc!!!

The Thrashers was intriguing and thrilling and I loved it so much. I read a lot of thrillers and this is one of the best I’ve read in a while.

Jodi and her friend group are known as “The Thrashers” and everyone wants to join them. When someone gets rejected from hanging out with them, it’s even called getting “Thrashed”. So when Emily dies, they are all implicated in her death. It seems like she is haunting them, with the lights flickering and the accidents they keep being involved in. Jodi has to decide whether to protect herself and betray her friends, or find a way to clear their names.

Jodi struggling with knowing if her friends really want her around or not was extremely relatable. She doesn’t have the money they do, and she starts noticing they hang out without her. Emily had a weird fixation with her that is never really explained. I couldn’t put this book down and had to know what would happen. That ending makes me hopeful that there will be another book.

Julie Soto and I must have the same brain receptors or something because I swear I just eat up anything this woman puts on paper. The Thrashers was exciting, creepy, entertaining, suspenseful, etc etc. I’m not usually one for thrillers but let’s be honest Julie Soto is a favorite and with this being described with Veronica Mars (I hate you Rob Thomas!) vibes, I wasn’t going to skip it.

I enjoyed the characters so much. Even though Jodie is our main the other members of the gang are explored thoroughly. I didn’t think they were too overly adult but I haven’t been in high school for ages so don’t hold me to this. I did feel Jodie’s constant need to feel validated as an actual member of the group though. That felt real and I think pretty relatable to a lot of young people.

The suspense of it all was really creepy and I did get scared a few times but I’m such a wimp so I doubt anyone else will have problems with it lol. The familial abuses explored were also really emotional and painful to read about but I really liked that Jodie found another to share the pain with.

Speaking of that other person, that’s the only thing I didn’t enjoy. How is Julie going to leave our boy in there to rot?! Is there going to be a sequel?? That epilogue opens up so many possibilities but I need him to get some sort of happy ending!

Overall another stunner by Julie Soto, really can’t wait to see which avenue she explores next! Thank you so much to Wednesday Books for gifting me this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I have not been able to stop thinking about this book since I put it down. I’m obsessed with Julie Soto’s work and this book just added fuel to that fire. If you are someone who reads YA thrillers and are looking for one to read, something to bring you out of a slump, something to keep you hooked, something to keep you engaged and also have you kicking your feet giggling sometimes (I sure did).

This was so so interesting. I loved the premise, I was so absorbed by the storytelling and narrative style, I loved loved loved the characters. They’re flawed but so real and so interesting. I loved The Thrashers, I loved their friendship and all of the intricacies of their relationships.

I loved reading through Jodi’s perspective. It was so interesting to see how her teenage brain received her vs. how she was being perceived by all the people around her. She was also such a beautifully complicated character and so well written.

I was reading this any chance that I got, I almost missed my bus stop because I couldn’t tear my eyes from the screen. Im OBSESSED. I thought it was such a unique way to write a thriller, it really did keep me second guessing what was really going on. Truly solidified that I love morally gray characters, they feel so real. It had me DOWN BAD rooting and shipping certain characters. I’m BEGGING for more, I need it, after that EPILOGUE (I’m gagged), I’m foaming at the mouth for more, there better be more there’s no way that was the real end.

ANYWAY, SO GOOD, please please go read this I need people to talk to about this book.

The Thrashers was one of those thriller/mysterious element books that I high fived myself after listening because I guessed some details correctly. I was IMMERSED in the story with the quick pacing and witty one liners. I'd love to see a sequel....the door is open for it.


There are some unsettling themes (the book starts off with a female committing suicide in her bath tub) that should have been included at the beginning before reading.

4/5

The Thrashers is the third book I've read by Julie Soto and I went in blind knowing this was her YA debut. I didn't know what to expect but wow, just wow. It's different from Julie's other books but I absolutely loved it. This book was so many things at once (in a good way). It had
- Mystery
- Paranormal
- LOTS of drama (It felt like I was watching a toxic reality show)
- Suspense

There is bullying and other heavy topics in the book so please check out the TWs! There were definitely parts where I needed to pause for a breather. While I enjoyed the book, I'm not too sure I liked the direction of the last 1/3, including the ending. I heard there might be a sequel so hopefully we get more details!!

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing the arc in exchange for a honest review. All opinions are my own.

4.5⭐️

Thank you @wednesdaybooks for the PR package and @macmillan.audio for the audio edition . ♡₊˚⊹

👯‍♀️ Jodi is part of the cool kids club, aka “the thrashers,” the fantastic five-some that everyone wants to sit next to at lunch. But now a girl has committed suicide and her journal implicates the thrashers.

🪦 Additionally, Jodi seems to be haunting them from beyond the grave. Or is it just coincidence that lights are flickering, dreams are nightmares, and anonymous texts are incoming?

💟 For anyone who loved Heathers (the original Mean Girls movie, est. 1989), you need to read this book! I loved the characters and how they are all morally ambiguous (some more black than grey). Team Julian!

📓 Bottom line this was such a fun read. It brought me back to high school cliques and all that angst + turmoil. Very bingeable but also worth reading for the deeper underlying themes.

▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||||။‌‌‌‌‌၊|• 🎧 Eva Kaminsky and Jesse Vilinsky on audio were amazing! Definitely recommend the audio for this one, tormented teens and valley girl drama!

TW: suicide, depression, bullying, child abuse, alcoholism

I REALLY wanted to love this one yall. I REALLY really did because I LOVE Julie, but this book was SUCH a challenge for me. DNF @ 40%. I am all about teen dramas and mystery/thrillers, but I had a REALLY hard time with the bullying in this one. It just was WAY too toxic for me to read comfortably. I didn't feel like I was adequately warned about the amount of heavy topics that would be discussed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a pretty fun YA thriller. It was a slow burn, semi-uneventful one, but it did hold my attention. It moved along quickly even though it wasn't as twisty as some of the other thrillers I've read. I didn't really like or care about any of the characters in this one, but I think that was kind of the point. It addresses some issues that are probably timely for teens today, so it was good in that sense.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I really liked this one. This was a perfect YA thriller debut. It was fast paced and so much fun to read. I absolutely loved loved loved the characters, Julian and Jodi. My absolute favorite. I definitely am needing more of them! If you are looking for a great thriller to read this summer, this is it.
Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for the ARC.

Soto can seriously write any and all genres!! This was such a fun read! Fast-paced, likable characters, twists, betrayal and revenge all wrapped up in a YA suspense mystery book! Seriously I read this within 24 hours! This will be a great addition to your shelves!

I had a really hard time rating this book. I (more than) love Julie Soto’s other books. I mean instant-flip-back-open-to-the-first-page-and-reread kinda loved. That being said this book was super well written and well thought out. I couldn’t stop reading, and as I got to about 95% I started to get disappointed because I knew there was no way to get to an ending I was happy with with so little left to go.

What I loved: she writes well. The characters are so fully formed and real to me, the story is gripping, and there’s a depth to the main characters (to me that’s Jodi, Julian, and Emily) that makes you both like and hate them each, but while your contempt for Emily grows, your sympathy for Julian does too, and it flips back and forth so often with Jodi.

What I didn’t like: well I guess no one said this would have a happy ending. It doesn’t. It’s interesting and complicated but left me feeling unsatisfied. So opposite from her other books. I thought the eternal haunting of Julian was interesting but not the way Julian and Jodi’s story ended. I also think Emily’s plan should have been ousted and not just left to haunt the reader. I hate that Zach…ugh I don’t know…what did he do? Play with Jodi’s feelings? Tried to manipulate her at the end? Sleep with Emily… just all of that. He was loathsome at the end and I’m not entirely sure that was the intent.

I don’t know, it’s hard to rate because in the end it fell flat for me but that’s not to say it was poorly written, just that maybe it’s not the right book for me.

My first Julie Soto book did not disappoint. This is a dark, twisty thrill ride full of secrets, privilege, and messy high school dynamics. This book is a perfect example of a YA thriller done right. Jodi Dillon gets pulled into an elite friend group where power rules—until a classmate dies and everything unravels. And the ending!! Oh my gosh, that blew my mind. Loved this one! This gave 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘴 meets 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘴 energy with a haunting edge.

Thank you @wednesdaybooks for the ARC!

Zack Thrasher (the group’s namesake), Lucy Reed, Paige Montgomery, and Julian Hollister and Jodi Dillon are the high school royalty known as the Thrasers. Few are welcomed to join this group. Emily Mills’ goal Was to be one of them. She wouldn’t stop trying to become a member. Emily hung around Jodi the most who she asked many questions on ho to become one of them. Emily is found dead due driven to suicide on the evening of prom. Rumors are circulated around school that she was “Thrashed”—socially ostracized—for trying to join the group. Everything starts to unravel after the police find Emily’s journal telling how she was bullied by all of them—except Jodi, who rebuffed her. Was it suicide or murder? Jodi feels compelled to seek the truth surrounding Emily’s death without implicating her friends, but the more she learns, the more she doubts them. What will Jodi find out?

The novel’s pacing contributes to the tension as strange and terrifying incidents occur. I felt and empathized with Jodi being kept in suspense throughout the novel. The author writes about the friendships that are toxic without realizing it for the harm it does. The author shows the results of trauma, backstabbing, social hierarchies and bullying that is often overlooked by teenagers—to them, it is just normal. It is dark and full of drama.

HO.
LY.
S#!T.
I need more NOW. Pronto. That's the entirety of my review. Julie Soto, please publish more now. Or just sit down and tell me what happens next. Msg me, I'll clear my schedule.

Seriously the strings between what is real, what is manipulated, what is covered up, are woven so tightly it's hard to know what's what. And I'm a reader that can usually sniff out the twists and turns pretty easily. Simplified breakdown: The IT crowd and what they can do to the "outsiders" but with dangerous consequences for all of them.