"Smile for the Cameras" is a slasher horror story focusing on an actress, Ella Winters, who hit it big as the Final Girl in a horror film. She, along with other members of the cast, harbors a dark secret regarding something that occurred during filming. When she returns to the same cabin where it was filmed 20 years later for a reunion with the cast, she and her castmates experience deadly events that are eerily like the movie’s plot.

The author did a good job crafting an array of characters that each have their own personalities and foibles. The protagonist comes across as intelligent, empathetic, and generally likable. I enjoyed her inner dialogue and the way she had to fight through her traumas to figure out what’s going on. She’s sweet, but broken, and some of her perceptions are not necessarily reliable in hindsight, which leads to some decent character reveals. The characters were well-crafted enough that it was a surprise when hidden agendas were revealed, which made the character aspect of the story fun.

Plotwise, this story epitomizes the “slow burn.” The plot is structured with chapters taking place in the past during the original filming, and others in the present during the reunion. This structure allows for good character development, but fully two thirds of the story is taken up establishing characters and circumstances leading up to the dark event that occurred, which can get a little frustrating. I kept waiting for something to happen (it is a slasher story, after all). Honestly, the “slasher” portion is a bit of a letdown. The synopsis makes it sound like the actors meet fates just like their characters in the movie, but let’s just say it’s kinda/sorta. I never really felt like the characters were in absolute grave danger, which I was really hoping for. I also didn’t really care for the mechanism in which the killer is revealed. I don’t want to give away spoilers but I just felt like it was too convenient.

Overall, it’s well-written with good characterizations, but I’d characterize it more as a psychological thriller than a slasher story.

This book is a perfect blend of a 90s slasher film and a present time-line whodunnit. There's a fun twist and it kept me guessing til the end. Great summertime read for those of us who like our beach reads with a little bit of murder in them.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I loved this book - it was so enjoyable and nostalgic of the best slasher films. If you're a fan of 80's and 90's horror films, you will probably appreciate this book. It gave me all the feels. It also broaches the topic of changes in Hollywood, including the MeToo movement in a way that I thought added to the story. I read a lot of horror and mystery books but I didn't guess the killer which was fun and surprising for me. Thoroughly enjoyed the horror and the literary aspects of this book. Highly recommend!

Smile for the Cameras is a fun, fast-paced slasher that hits all the right nostalgic horror notes. It follows a group of actors from a cult horror film reuniting years later — and naturally, things spiral. The past/present format and fake script pages added a cool twist without feeling gimmicky.

It’s not super deep, but it’s self-aware and delivers exactly what you'd want from a throwback slasher: suspense, twists, and a final girl to root for. Quick, creepy, and a great weekend read

Ok so this was a fun one! My Gen X and Elder Millennial friends will enjoy too as the story originates in the early 2000s. It will bring back some fun nostalgia of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer vibes!

Ella is in a rough stage of life and her career. She left the spotlight after starring as the final girl in the hit movie Grad Night to take care of her ailing mother, who recently passed away. In an effort to revitalize her career, she reluctantly decides to join the original cast and crew for a 20th year reunion.

What comes back to haunt them is the secret they left the set with many years ago. They must then relive the plot to that fateful movie, and listen when I tell you — there will be a body count by the end!

I enjoyed it from start to finish! Solid 4.5 for me.

A book reminiscent of 90s horror movies. A twisted killer with plenty of plot twists and intrigue. This story is told over two different timelines, both of which were interesting and kept me turning the pages for more.

3.5 stars

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This is a quick good read to add to your summer tbr, especially if you are participating in Summerween. If you like 90s and early 2000s slasher vibes, then I think you would enjoy this book.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on Smile for the Cameras by Miranda Smith (coming 6.24.25!), and let me tell you… this psychological thriller/horror SLASHED its way to a five-star rating from me! 🔪⭐️

This book gave me everything I crave in a slasher-style read: survivor’s guilt, chilling trauma, a haunted past, fame’s darker side, and a strong dose of paranoia. It’s packed with tropes horror fans will eat up—think “final girl” energy, a slasher reunion in an isolated cabin, masked killers, death imitating fiction, and a twisty locked-room mystery vibe.

This was my first Miranda Smith novel, but it definitely won’t be my last. I was immediately pulled in by the setup and loved how the pacing kept my curiosity alive. It’s not lightning fast, but it builds—layer by layer, question by question. And the most impressive part? Miranda seemed to read my mind. Every time I suspected someone or had a theory, the characters brought it up in the story! It felt like I was sleuthing right alongside them. And while some characters were a bit predictable, their motivations? Absolutely jaw-dropping.

Fans of Halloween slashers will feel right at home. The book even references classic horror flicks—there’s a scene where the characters casually rank their faves, and it’s such a clever nod to the genre.

What really stands out, though, is how this book explores the dark underbelly of Hollywood. Not the glam, but the grit—the exploitation, manipulation, and heartbreak hiding behind the cameras. It made me think deeply about the childhood stars we all grew up with and what they may have endured behind the scenes.

Told in third-person POV with dual timelines (and even a few chilling script-style chapters), this book weaves past and present so well, you can feel the eerie echoes of what came before.

If you’re into slow-burn suspense, slasher nostalgia, and a plot that doesn’t just entertain but unsettles—RUN, don’t walk. This one’s calling your name. 🎥🩸

And that, my friends, is today’s tea on “Smile for the Cameras” ☕️

Horror nostalgia? Final girls? Unreliable narrators? Just go ahead and bill me monthly.

Listen, I know we’re knee-deep in the golden age of “final girl but make it meta” fiction right now—and I’m not mad about it. Smile for the Cameras slides right into that trend like it’s wearing vintage Reeboks and a blood-spattered prom dress. And guess what? I ate it up like it was the last popcorn in a haunted movie theater.

This book is a twisty little thriller with just the right balance of eerie callbacks and modern commentary. The characters are deliciously unreliable—everyone’s got secrets, no one’s telling the whole truth, and paranoia is practically a supporting character. One minute you’re sure you’ve cracked it… the next, the plot sucker-punches you and runs off giggling.

The ending is just as crazy, cheesy, and action packed as you would expect it to be.

What an amazing homage to the horror genre! Even the cover is nostalgic. This book was the perfect combination of creepy atmosphere, tropey fun, and full-on horror gore. It had everything I love—80’s and 90’s slasher vibes, secrets from the past, and a chilling remote setting.
The premise hooked me right away: Ella, the final girl from the cult slasher Grad Night, is drawn back into the horror two decades later when the studio plans a reunion at the original set—a place that holds real trauma for everyone involved. After years out of the spotlight, Ella returns out of necessity, but what starts as a PR stunt quickly turns into a bloodbath as the past refuses to stay buried.
Ella was a great protagonist—flawed, haunted, resilient—and the rest of the cast felt just as layered. The ending? Classic slasher chaos! It was totally over the top in a good way, especially when the twist hits.
If you're a fan of horror, especially slasher films, this book is for you. It's bloody, smart, nostalgic, and fun. 4.5 star rounded up to 5.

Thank you @MirandaSmith, @RandomHousePublishingGroup, @Ballentine and @NetGalley for a free e-ARC. The opinions are mine alone and not biased in any way.

This book was SO fun! As an avid fan of the Scream franchise, I was getting all those vibes. It was a quick, easy read & I loved the chapters with the scenes from the film. My only wish is that it had been more scary! Regardless, this is a great popcorn book for summer.

When a group of actors come together to film a reunion for the cult-classic horror film they starred in many years ago... chaos ensues.

I am a huge fan of horror - movies and books - I'm here for it. Smile for the Cameras definitely stuck to the typical 90s horror cliches, from it's stereotypical leads, to it's setting at an remote cabin in the woods, and I got a kick out of it's camp factor.. and I'm super happy the "now and then" storyline switching stopped when the action started happening...

But about that chaos.

It took forever for this story to get going. At 60% of the way through, I nearly gave up. The screenplay excerpts were completely unnecessary, as the "then" storyline had that covered 100%. The "now" part of the storyline was lackluster and not exciting. If this book had been about half the length, I think it could have done what it intended to do. For me it was just too long for the amount of thrills that it was able to illicit. And I'm not going to even get into the twist, and how much sense it didn't make.

This one was definitely not for me.

I think horror about films are some of my favorites after the first horror movies I ever really enjoyed were V/H/S and The Blair Witch Project and I’ve come to love movies like Scream and books like Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie. Smile for the Camera is another great edition to this flavor of horror, while also being a scathing look at the misogyny and abuse that women in film have endured.

Thank to NetGalley for an ARC of smile for the camera!

Unfortunately, I didn’t like this very much. I found myself struggling so hard to get through it. I don’t want to say it was *boring*, but I didn’t find myself interested in anything going on, didn’t connect with the characters, and the plot twist wasn’t really plot twisting. Lots of potential - not great execution.

I love a good slasher book. I don’t like slasher movie because they are too graphic, with a book I can control the graphics in my head. I liked the premise of the story. A reunion of a poplar slasher movie. What I didn’t like was the main character Ella . She was the final girl in the original movie. I don’t know how she became a final girl. She is so whiny and irritating I wanted to kill her first.
This is the first book I have read by this author. I enjoyed the story and the pace and the twist and turns but like I said Ella ruined the story for me, which was disappointing.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for a honest opinion.2.5⭐️

A group of actors in the middle of the woods all harboring a dark secret? What could possibly go wrong??

This story follows Ella who has been invited to join fellow cast and crew of the movie Grad Night for a 20 year reunion. She is hesitant to go but is eager to revive her acting career and her agent assures her this is the way to do it. We soon learn that something happened during the original Grad Night shoot and nothing is what it seems.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! There are so many twists and turns I didn’t see coming. It’s very reminiscent of an 80’s slasher movie and I loved that! I really enjoyed the flashbacks and script scenes as well.


Thank you Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

I enjoyed this final girl themed book. I really liked the dual timelines, 90s nostalgia, and the characters. The writing was well done and I would be interested in reading more from this author. I also really liked that it included Hollywood and the industry. A solid horror read.

The reunion was supposed to revive their careers—not their worst nightmare.

📚 4 Reasons to Read
Final girl legacy – A chilling dive into what happens after the credits roll, with Ella facing her past in the most deadly way.


Slasher reunion vibes – The original cast reuniting at the creepy cabin? Horror gold with a twist of nostalgia.


Buried secrets – Everyone's hiding something, and the past refuses to stay dead.


Hollywood horror – A razor-sharp look at fame, trauma, and how far people will go to protect their image.

I have been in the most horrible reading slump for the past few months. But this book snapped me out of it. It’s fun, campy, and has a dual timeline that isn’t confusing. The pacing is very quick, and reading it during the summer gives me a woodsy vibes. It’s not a complex book but it is slightly twisty. So if you like just fun horror, check this one out.

This book was so much fun. It was great to flip between past and present to get a better understanding of what brought these characters to this reunion and how each of them was approaching the idea. I flew through this book, and I think it makes for a great fun summer scare, or an awesome book to read to kick off spooky season this fall.

I absolutely loved the script excerpts scattered throughout. I'm a film lover so love reading scripts in general, but I also thought these were really well placed and helped with navigating tonal shifts/breaking up the book into sections.

Being in the head of a character that isn't exactly a reliable narrator, but also isn't deliberately withholding information in how she narrates was a really refreshing take on the concept of the unreliable narrator. While in the moment of reading I wasn't sold on the killer's reveal, looking back it's fun to see how it intertwined with everything else going on.

Overall, it was a fun slasher book, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror movies and books, but especially for fans of The Pledge, Your Lonely Nights Are Over, and Mister Magic!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my e-ARC of Smile for the Cameras!

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔
🎥 have ever wanted to be in a movie
🔪 love slasher films
🤫 can keep a secret
👻 ever see things that aren’t there

• 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓

Twenty years ago, Ella Winters was the it girl. She made a name for herself in Hollywood and throughout America as the sole survivor in the cult-classic slasher Grad Night. But the real horror is what happened when the cameras weren’t rolling—something terrible that Ella and her co-stars agreed never to speak of again. Shortly after the movie’s premiere, Ella disappeared from the acting scene under the pretense of caring for her ailing mother, hoping for a quiet life out of the spotlight to ease her guilty mind.

Since her mother’s passing, Ella has decided to return to the silver screen. And with the cast and crew of Grad Night in the process of filming a reunion documentary, Ella has an express ticket back into Hollywood’s good graces. Weighed down by the secret she’s been keeping all these years, Ella apprehensively makes the trip to the original set—a cabin in rural Tennessee—to reunite with her castmates for the first time in more than a decade. But when the actors begin to meet the same gruesome fates as the characters they originally played, falling victim to someone dressed as the Grad Night villain, it’s clear their secret is out.

Now, the question is: Can the final girl survive one last nightmare?

• 𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒

I was so excited for this one, but sadly I was a bit letdown. The pacing was just a bit too slow for my tastes, and I considered DNFing a few times. I’m glad that I didn’t, as I really wanted to know who the bad guy was. I was also shocked by the twist, as I just didn’t see it coming. My favorite parts of the story were when they were filming in the past, as I feel like I learned a few things about what it’s like to be on set. I also enjoyed the movie, and would love to see it actually made into a full length film! Overall, this one just slightly missed the mark for me, but if you love campy slasher films, then you’ll probably love this one!