The Girls Weekend

This closed room mystery ticked a lot of my Awesome Suspense Read boxes and was such a fun read! We have a beautiful, slightly off the grid setting, a gaggle of Uni friends (including a nasty frenemy) and an intriguing story filled with secrets and betrayals as five university girlfriends get together after many years apart. Things go from an initial awkward first meet to a drunken night of reminiscing followed by the friends waking up the next morning with one of them missing and the rest not remembering what happened. Secrets and personal conflicts start to emerge, motives are revealed, and fingers start to point as they each start to suspect each other.

This was a quick read and I loved the atmospheric, isolated (and posh) feel of the setting and the number of plausible motives due to the interpersonal conflicts of the characters. My only beef is that things slow down a bit in the middle and one character's insistence on not calling the cops seemed overdone to the point of being annoying. Even though some characters were written better than others, this was a solid and enjoyable thriller that provides readers with great red herrings to keep them turning the pages. 

Overall, this is an entertaining read from a new-to-me author that kept me turning the pages so fast that I read it in just over a day. I enjoyed Gehrman's look at the close, complicated, and sometimes toxic parts of female friendship (and loved her opening line - see below). I loved that everyone seems to have a motive and even though I guessed whodunnit, I quite enjoyed the journey through old friendships, secrets, and more baggage than Samsonite. This was an engaging story that makes me incredibly grateful for my University and College friends and our noticeable lack of baggage.

Disclaimer: Thanks to the publisher for providing me a complimentary digital copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Jody Gehrman

Genre: Suspense

Type: eBook

Source: NetGalley

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

First Published: June 9, 2020

Opening Line: Like most clusterfucks these days, it starts with a group text.

Book Description from GoodReads: Their reunion just became a crime scene . . .

June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie--and her husband, June's former crush--but agrees to go.

The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone's a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie's husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.

A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise, this brooding, atmospheric novel will keep you guessing as each twist reveals a new possibility. It will remind you of friendships hidden in the depths of your own past, and make you wonder how well you really know the people you've loved the longest.