Review: The Girls Weekend by Jody Gehrman
The Girls Weekend
by Jody Gehrman
Thank you to the author for this copy! And head over to my Instagram page @wherethereadergrows and enter to win 3 e-copies of this novel.
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publish Date: August 11, 2020
Kindle Edition
320 Pages
Standalone
Genres: Thriller, Locked Room Mystery
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.
My Review:
Any time you get a group of friends with a long history together for a girls weekend, you just know there's some kind of drama that's going to happen. Especially when the narrator is apprehensive about going in the first place. **rubs hands and grabs popcorn**
If you're a fan of locked-in mysteries, this will be a fun read for you. None of these characters are particularly likable. Sadie is a highly successful woman who seems to have it all but also seems to want to control and manipulate everything in her path. Amy is bipolar and is dependent on Sadie to both of their detriment. June is our main characters and whose only POV we see this story through. Eve is her best friend who convinces her to come on the trip and then there is Kimiko, their token biracial friend who is also a pot head working in a dispensary and has a son in juvie.
What was great about this read is how quickly it was to fly through in its moderate pacing. Gehrman does a fantastic job of keeping you on your toes. Each person has a reason, each person is complicated and when you add a daughter, a husband and a man who works the land also included in this weekend... now we are looking at EVERYONE. However, there is also still only a limited number of suspects so at the end of the day, we're not completely surprised when the reveal does come. The epilogue also was a bit too neatly tied up for my particular taste.
Overall I had a fun time with this read. As my second Gehrman read, my first being Watch Me (which I would highly recommend), I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for her next release. While I did have some issue with this particular read (token POC character and mental health issues), Gehrman is clearly talented and will continue to stay on my radar.
★★★
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