Mini Reviews: The Girls Are All So Nice Here, Girl Friends

Hi friends! ☀️ I’m back today with some short, quick reviews of some of my recent reads! This will be a nice change from my usual YA book reviews, since these two are adult contemporary reads… a bit tough to read, at times. I hope you’ll enjoy!

I’d love to know your thoughts on that quick reviewing format, so please let me know in comments if you like it!

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

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Review: The Girls Are All So Nice Here, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Published by Simon & Schuster on March 9, 2021
Genres: adult, thriller
Format: eBook
Buy on Amazon, Bookshop, Blackwell's
Goodreads

A USA TODAY Best Book of 2021
Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this “propulsive” (Megan Miranda, bestselling author of The Girl from Widow Hills) psychological thriller.
A lot has changed in years since Ambrosia Wellington graduated from college, and she’s worked hard to create a new life for herself. But then an invitation to her ten-year reunion arrives in the mail, along with an anonymous note that reads, “We need to talk about what we did that night.”
It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything.
At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused—the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding. And it was all because of the game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else and the girl who paid the price.
Alternating between the reunion and Amb’s freshman year, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a “chilling and twisty thriller” (Book Riot) about the brutal lengths girls can go to get what they think they’re owed, and what happens when the games we play in college become matters of life and death.

☂️ TRIGGER WARNINGS:

murder, suicide, rape (on page), alcohol consumption, drug abuse, bullying, detailed description of self-harm, sex, gaslighting, toxic friendship, infidelity, mention of cancer, cursing.

If you like gripping, psychological thrillers with mean girls, you should love this one. I was engrossed from page one, wondering about these messed-up, a little (and for some, a lot) unlikeable characters and what they did in the past. I loved the whole past/present timelines, keeping up the suspense until the very end and I gasped, more than once while reading this book.

That being said, please note the trigger warnings above. This book disturbed me, at times and some scenes triggered me a little bit, as well. The girls are definitely not nice here, like, at all!

FINAL RATING : 3,5 stars!

Buy this book:

Review: Girl Friends, Holly Bourne

Girl Friends by Holly Bourne
Published by Hodder & Stoughton Genres: adult, contemporary
Format: eBook
Buy on Amazon, Bookshop, Blackwell's
Goodreads

"Men see women in two separate categories. There are the women they sleep with, and the women they fall in love with. And they will treat you differently based on that."
From the day they first meet as teenagers Fern and Jessica are best friends. Despite their differences, they are there for each other throughout everything, navigating the difficulties of growing up and fitting in. That is until Jessica crosses a line that Fern can't forgive.
But now, more than ten years later, Jessica has unexpectedly reappeared in Fern's life.
A lot has changed for them both - but can their relationship be different now they are older? Is it possible for either of them to rewrite the role that they have been cast in? Or will their shared history ultimately be doomed to repeat itself again?
Set between the present day and the past, GIRL FRIENDS is a blisteringly funny and devastating novel: both a joyful celebration of female friendship and a razor-sharp look at the damage we can all cause to those we claim to love the most.

☂️ TRIGGER WARNINGS:

slut-shaming, sexual assault, self-harming, suicide ideation, alcohol & drugs use, divorce, depression.

Note : Girl Friends is the title of the book in the UK. In the US, this book is titled When We Were Friends.

Holly Bourne is a must-read author for me. I love her young adult and her adult books. They’re always little punches in the gut, I don’t know how else to say this.

Girl Friends was just like that. I loved the focus on female friendships, how past relationships between friends affect relationships now, the way we perceive people versus who they really are and so on. This book’s ugly, at times (once again, check the trigger warnings!), but it also, sadly, feels so, real. I loved the narration between past and present and couldn’t wait to see what would happen to these two best friends, now. I loved it.

FINAL RATING : 4 stars!

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Did you read The Girls are All So Nice Here and/or Girl Friends? Do you want to?

What are some of your latest adult reads? Let me know in comments!

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