Dangerous Girls in The Under-Hyped Readathon!

Dec 21, 2014 Charlotte rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

For more reviews check out Books & Baby etc.

I read Dangerous Boys back in August after Abby kindly sent it to me to review. I fell in love with it straight away and I was blown away by how well Abigail Haas writes about the darker side of the teenage mind. I bought Dangerous Girls after Lauren from A Blonde Librarian recommended it on her blog and I spotted it in the Kindle store for 99p. As you may know I'm a bit of a bargain hunter when it comes to ebooks and I generally tend to wait until the For more reviews check out Books & Baby etc.

I read Dangerous Boys back in August after Abby kindly sent it to me to review. I fell in love with it straight away and I was blown away by how well Abigail Haas writes about the darker side of the teenage mind. I bought Dangerous Girls after Lauren from A Blonde Librarian recommended it on her blog and I spotted it in the Kindle store for 99p. As you may know I'm a bit of a bargain hunter when it comes to ebooks and I generally tend to wait until the prices drop right down before I buy something. I couldn't resist Dangerous Girls at that price and now after finishing it I can honestly say I would definitely pay much more than that for it. It was brilliant and I can't remember the last time I stayed up late because I just couldn't bear to put my book down and not know what happened. Abigail Haas is now firmly on my auto-buy list. I can't wait to read something else by her.

Okay so the story follows our narrator Anna Chevalier, her boyfriend Tate Dempsey and her best friend Elise Warren as they holiday in Aruba with a group of friends. At some point during the trip Elise is murdered and an investigation starts into who could have done it. Could Anna and Tate have plotted to kill their friend? Did she disturb an intruder? Or did one of the group have a hidden vendetta against her? There are so many possibilities that you will not be able to put it down until you know the truth. Anna is a great narrator, her story switches between the present day after the murder and flashbacks of how she met Elise and the progression of their friendship. Her boyfriend Tate is a 'good kid' with designs on the presidency one day. Elise is a former straight-laced girl gone wild with her new freedom from the bitchy clique she was friends with before Anna started at the school. You get plenty of backstory in this book and it is definitely more about the psychology behind the events rather than the murder itself.

Okay so then we have all the other side characters: jealous Melanie, rich boy AK whose house they are staying in, Max and Chelsea the brother-sister duo and Lamar the laid-back boyfriend of Chelsea's. In stories like this you can usually come up with a theory for everyone and this was no different. I had a solid theory for at least three characters. There are also two suspicious men who Elise had irritated during their stay on the island: Niklaas the sleazy guy she hooked up with in a club and Juan the street seller with a problem. As you can see there is a whole host of characters of which any could be possible suspects. Your brain will probably go into overdrive trying to figure out who has a motive and who is most likely to have want to hurt Elise. I picked my suspect early on and stuck to it but I did toy around with a couple of other potentials! I won't go into details because I don't want to give spoilers but let's just say this is one juicy whodunnit.

Now I've seen quite a few reviews where the reader wasn't happy that you don't get to see how the murder played out. I actually really like that. I am tired of always seeing things from the victim's POV or from the investigative team. It was interesting to see things from the side of someone caught up in events out of their control. Anna and Elise were best friends and it is horrible to imagine what it would be like to be the friend or family member of someone who loses their life in such a tragic way. Of course there is also plenty of courtroom action which I am a big fan of so it's a bit of crossover between mystery/psychological thriller/crime which just so happen to be my favourite genres.

The other thing I noticed about other people's reviews of Dangerous Girls is that they didn't see the ending coming. I have to be honest and say that I did guess it and that I guessed pretty early on but it doesn't make the ending any less shocking or disturbing. I still couldn't believe it and had to jump straight on Twitter to make shocked faces at Lauren. I did have one or two other theories in the back of my mind whilst reading it but I kept going back to my original one and it turned out that I was right. I should probably point out that I read mysteries and thrillers a lot though and I LOVE to speculate and attempt to work out the ending before I get there so a lot of the time I do figure it out. I think if you just go into this without trying to second guess everything and look for clues then you will have less chance of spoiling it for yourself. Like I said though, don't worry too much if you think your theory is right because it won't really ruin it.

If you want to talk spoilers then go and check out Lauren's discussion about Dangerous Girls. She has some interesting thoughts and I'd love to see what other people thought about it too. ...more

Like · see review

Aug 23, 2014 Tracey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: e-book

Ok I cannot process what just happened. WHAT. SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED.

THOUGHT PROCESS ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 26, 2014 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: finished-in-2016

Um... Wow! Dangerous Girls was extremely entertaining. I sped through this book in only two days.

1 like · Like · see review

Apr 28, 2014 Jordan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This book absolutely shocked me. It was so well written and engaging! It made me need to keep turning the pages, find out how it was going to end. I did guess the ending, but it still had me gaping when I finished the last page!

There were many ways this book could have gone wrong. For instance the time line jumping. I've read books like this before and they can be hard to follow and you get lost trying to figure out what's going on but this, in my opinion, was flawless! I was never lost or confu ...more

Like · see review