Reviews

Dead Girls, by Graeme Cameron

mommasaystoread's review

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1.0

I love a good, gripping mystery and/or an edge of your seat thriller. Unfortunately, Dead Girls was neither. The blurb sounded so promising, and I got that our protagonist was suffering from some confusion and memory loss from her attack, However, when you have a main character that is already confused, a convoluted story may not be the best way to go. Between info dump style paragraphs, convos with little to no clarification as to who is speaking, and abrupt scene changes, it all became a jumbled mess. Add in the many characters and so much going on, and the effort it took to keep up with it all became more work than enjoyment. Thankfully, the story isn't overly lengthy, and while I considered giving up several times, I did finish in hopes that things would improve. In my humble opinion, they did not, and if I had to sum it up in one word, I would say busy - Dead Girls is incredibly busy.
The beauty of reading is what drove me to distraction with this one may well be the very things that make someone else fall in love with it. So, if it sounds like your kind of thing, by all means, give it shot.

mandylovestoread's review against another edition

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2.0

Dead Girls by Graeme Cameron sounded like the kind of thriller that keeps me up all night turning pages. Sadly for me it just wasn't. I have read mixed reviews on this book, so maybe it is just not the right book for me at the moment.

I found the story to be very confusing, so many characters and storylines happening all at the same time. It seems to jump around a lot and I found myself going back to re read as I wasn't sure where we were up to.

Thanks to Harlequin Australia and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book to read in exchange for my honest opinions

aly36's review

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4.0

Detective Ali Green has her work cut out for her in this serial killer book. Detective Ali Green has been through a lot in past with serial killers, but she is not going to let this stop her. This book was face paced and full of great action. I enjoyed this book. *I received a free e-copy from NetGalley and this is my honest review.*

sewcialist_librarian's review against another edition

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3.0

This one picks up nearly exactly where the first one left off. As conflicted as I was over cheering for a serial killer in the first book...I was decidedly NOT cheering for him this time.

bibliophilebookclub's review against another edition

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4.0

Really enjoyed this one! Review to follow closer to publication!

aperfectmjk's review against another edition

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2.0

DNF - 50% Completion

Well folks, I tried, really I did. I really hate to give up on a novel, but, I decided after the last terrible book I suffered through, that I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't waste the effort in attempting to get through it when there were certain factors involved. Let's face it, there are some novels where there are things that just won't change no matter how far you read into it, and this was one of those novels.

The first thing and probably the most important factor in my decision to abandon the novel was the narration. Good grief Charlie Brown! This thing was all over the place, I have never read a more jarring novel. One minute, you're reading along, trying to follow the storyline (not an easy task let me add) and then BAM, you're all the sudden reading something about another character that for all I know could be the past... maybe the present... it's hard to say. The author offers no page breaks to assist the reader, and this my friends as we all know just creates a very unpleasant reading experience.

The next factor in my decision to abandon the novel was the dialogue. The dialogue is very minimal, clunky, and often doesn't flow well. Many of the characters come across the same, and you often can't tell who is saying what. The constant cutting off of dialogue is very overdone and quite frankly annoying. A thought is often never finished and this interrupts not only the flow in dialogue, but also the reader's flow.

"That in itself raises questions, given what we think happened immediately afterwards, so the firs-"

"Wait," I said. "Wait wait wait. What do you mean, what we think happened?"


And the dialogue continues and the reader is never clued into what the complete thought was supposed to be. This happens way more often than it should.

Lastly... character development and overall plot. WHAT... THE.. HECK... PEOPLE?!? Okay, let me take a moment to acknowledge that yes, this is the second in the series, and yes, maybe I should have read the first before reading this one. That said, I have picked up plenty of novels that are parts two, three, and even further into a series, and have never felt so lost before. With this one, it was literally like walking into the movie theater mid movie and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Generally, an author will slowly starting filling the reader in throughout the novel with the backstory on the characters from the previous novel(s). In this case however, I'm pretty sure for the first 3 or 4 chapters I didn't even know who was narrating. There was no proper introduction, it just felt so off-putting. I tell ya, when an author can hook me mid series, and make me want to go back and read the previous novels in the series because the novel was just that good, then that's when you know it was done right. But when I need to stop reading the novel and go back and read the first in the series, well, then I can't say that character development and plot were really on point.

I want to thank NetGalley, Harlequin - Park Row Books, and Graeme Cameron for allowing me the opportunity to read this novel in exchange for my review. I'm sorry it just didn't work out so great for me.

nickikendall's review against another edition

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3.0

After reading Normal (Dead girls is the sequel to Normal) I was really looking forward to Dead girls as Normal was one of my favourite reads of last year. Maybe I had my expectations too high, but I felt like Dead Girls whilst it was still good and definitely got harder to put down once I was halfway through it, it just didn't captivate me the way Normal did. This book was more about the chase/hunt for the serial killer and unravelling who was good and who was bad, whereas Normal was more about the perspective from the serial killer which I really enjoyed being inside his dark mind. Whilst I am glad I read this book, I would recommend reading Normal over this one. #graemecameron #deadgirls #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #bookstagram #bookqueen #thriller
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