I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters Published by Crooked Lane Books on December 10 2019
Genres: Adult, Thriller
Pages: 280
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
The nitty-gritty: A tense, thrilling mystery with tinges of the supernatural, Damien Angelica Walters’ latest will have your frantically turning pages long into the night.
Damien Angelica Walters is known for her edgy and disturbing horror stories, and I was excited to dive into her latest novel. With The Dead Girls Club, she veers off into thriller territory, giving us a more commercially accessible story that will definitely increase her fan base. And for that I’m thrilled, because Damien deserves the attention. Her latest is a slow burn, creepy tale of a woman whose terrible past is coming back to haunt her, reminiscent of I Know What You Did Last Summer. I tore through these pages because I had to find out what was going on, and boy did I have fun!
The story alternates between two timelines: “Now” and “Then,” and is told from the first person perspective of Heather Cole. In the present, Heather is a child psychologist and is happily married to a contractor named Ryan. Heather and Ryan don’t have children but are focused on their careers and relationship instead. Life is good, until one day Heather receives a mysterious envelope in the mail. Inside is a chilling artifact from her childhood, a friendship necklace—half a heart—that shouldn’t exist. After all, Heather knows the necklace was around her best friend Becca’s neck the night she died. She knows this because she was there, and she has the twin necklace, the opposite side of the heart, to prove it.
Flashing back to 1991, we learn about twelve-year-old Heather and her friends Becca, Gia and Rachel—the Dead Girls Club—who bonded over their love of scary stories about serial killers. The leader of the group, Becca, tells the others a story about the Red Lady, a woman who was persecuted long ago for witchcraft, and who now haunts the living with promises of helping young women who seek revenge. The other girls laugh this off nervously as “just a story,” but Becca becomes more and more insistent that the Red Lady is real.
The secret of Becca’s death has long been buried since the girls were twelve, but now someone has found out about it and seems determined to torment Heather. More mysterious items from the past turn up, she starts to hear strange voices, and Heather knows the only way to put the past to rest is to find and confront whoever is stalking her.
This is a multilayered story, not surprising when you consider who wrote it. In places it’s a straight-up thriller, a story about a woman who is being targeted by someone who knows her deep, dark secret. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find it also has even darker elements: domestic abuse, mental illness and the fragility of relationships between husbands and wives, childhood friends, parents and children. Walters’ writing is taught and deceptively simple, and because we spend the entire story in Heather’s head, we get to watch her gradual change from a content, responsible adult into a woman who seems to slowly be losing her mind.
Not everyone is going to like Heather. She’s obsessively trying to find the person who is taunting her, which causes her to make some terrible decisions. Not only do her patients suffer, since she can’t seem to focus on anything, but she does one thing in particular that could put her marriage in jeopardy, and I almost couldn’t forgive her for that. Walters does a great job of setting up a happy and stable relationship between Heather and Ryan, then pulling the rug out from under it as Heather starts to lose her sanity. This is the kind of story that needs an unreliable main character to keep the suspense going, and Heather gives us that in spades.
One of my favorite things about this story is the nostalgic feeling I got while reading it. Heather and her friends at twelve weren’t so different from me and my group of friends, although we didn’t go so far as to obsess over serial killers. (Although I do remember being mildly obsessed with Charles Manson and the Sharon Tate murders in college!) Heather was introduced to the books of Stephen King at a young age, which helped form her lifelong love of the macabre, and I smiled at the part where she remembers her father giving her a copy of Carrie to read, her very first King book. (Mine was The Shining, but honestly, your first Stephen King is something you never forget!) Heather’s childhood brought back sharp memories of slumber parties, ghost stories, and “light as a feather, stiff as a board” games, those weird and dark rituals of childhood that can never be recreated.
The plot gets a little crazy in the last few chapters, and I have to admit I did not see that ending coming at all! I loved the way Walters answers most of our questions, although readers are going to have to decide for themselves whether the supernatural elements are real or not. The Dead Girls Club is a fast, fun read with plenty of secrets and darker moments for those readers looking for a satisfying mystery.
Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.
I have an ARC of this as well and really need to pick it up.
Hope you get to read it!
Fantastic review! The nostalgia of this book was definitely one of my favorite parts!
Yes! I feel like a lot of that was autobiographical. She described that sense of being part of a secret club so well:-)
Nice review! You’ve gotten me intrigued about The Dead Girls Club. I like complex, multi-layered stories.
Priscilla Bettis recently posted…5 Non Sequiturs
Thanks Priscilla, she’s such a great writer. I recommend her short stories as well.
I had no idea your first King was The Shining! Mine too. I remember reading it in 6th grade history class (I was the kid that had already read the assignment so I sat in back and hid The Shining so I could read it – and it was HARD to hide a book that big). I’m so thrilled to see you loved this one and I do like alternating time lines so I think it will really work for me. I also remember you love this author so I’m eager to try her out.
I had a paperback of The Shining and I also cheated and read it in class! Ha ha, great minds think alike:-)
Great review! I often enjoy stories with dual timelines and I’ve already got this on my list.
Laura Thomas recently posted…The Twelve Days Of Christmas ~ A Calling Bird ~ Spotlight and Giveaway
I love dual timelines, and this worked really well:-)
Ooh, this does sound good! I’m not familiar with this author, will have to check out her work.
This was actually different from the other books she’s written, but I’m glad to see her branching out a bit.
I like the sounds of this one and the dual timelines sounds really good too. I’m hoping my library is going to carry it. Great review.
I loved the dual timelines, it adds quite a bit to the story:-)
My first King book was Carrie, stolen off my dad’s nightstand 🙂 Great review, I am looking forward to the moment when I can sit down and read this one!
I love that!
I’m glad you liked this one more than I did.
I totally get why it won’t work for everyone;-)
This sounds REALLY good. I like that you compared it to Lois Duncan, she was my girl back in the day lol. I might have to check this one out at some point!
It was lots of creepy fun!
Quite an intriguing review! I like the idea that the supernatural element depends on the eye of the beholder: sometimes getting all the answers is not as satisfactory as being left with some unanswered questions… 😉
Thanks for sharing!
Maddalena@spaceandsorcery recently posted…THE CALCULATING STARS, by Mary Robinette Kowal
I really don’t mind stories that are a little open ended, as long as they are well written:-)
I agree with you about the supernatural elements, Tammy, and you’ve reviewed this brilliantly. I’ve read nothing like this book! I enjoyed it and am still wrapping my head around it!
I agree with you about the supernatural elements, Tammy, and you’ve reviewed this brilliantly. I’ve read nothing like this book! I enjoyed it and am still wrapping my head around it!
It was very different, I agree! Thanks Jennifer:-)
I almost forgot I grabbed this one off NetGalley, and heck, even my husband read this before me! He said it was really good too, which is saying something because he is so picky about his books. I already wanted to read this, but your review just sealed the deal 😀
I’m happy that Damien is getting attention with this book, she’s a very good writer.
When you mentioned the nostalgic feeling you got reading the book, especially when referring back to childhood, it immediately brought to mind Stephen King, who I’ve always felt does a fantastic job writing kids who remind us of ourselves. So I had to laugh when, in the same paragraph, you tell of how King is mentioned in the book. That makes me curious to try this one. I haven’t read something that felt that way in quite some time.
I think King goes hand in hand with nostalgia, he does it so well. And the author must be a big King fan because she really evokes that feeling, at least for me.
I will always love me a good layered mystery, and it sounds like this one does it well! I am all for the now and then format, and I like that this one has tinges of supernatural to it too. I’ve been blog hopping today and seeing it around a lot, so I am thinking of giving it a go myself.
Olivia Roach recently posted…November Wrap Up! [2019]
I’ve been seeing it around a lot too. I love this author so I hope it does well:-)
I definitely want to read this and it’s already on my wish list so good to read your review. I like the sound of the nostalgic element too.
Lynn
Hope you get to read it!
I had so much fun reading this one. 🙂
It was a lot of fun, right?
I think friendship necklaces (or bracelets) all on their own are quite chilling as artifacts go, and I think this story sounds like a wonderfully incisive look at the horror that is this whole “friendship” phenomenon!
This one sounds like a stay-up-all-nighter. Thanks for the review.