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

Title: The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 320 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Edelweiss

Summary:

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 shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.

A lot has changed in the 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’d 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 shocking novel 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.

Review:

The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn is a tense, suspenseful mystery.

Ambrosia “Amb” Wellington’s college dream of becoming an actress has given way to a career in PR.  Once she leaves college, she never looks back but she is still friends with two of her college roommates. When she receives an email to her ten-year reunion, Amb immediately hits the delete button. She is rattled by a card she receives in the mail but it convinces her she is right to skip the upcoming reunion.

But after her friends mention the reunion in front of her husband Adrian, Amb feels pressured to attend. The last person she expects to see is her former college friend, Sloane “Sully” Sullivan. Amb works hard to resist the falling under Sully’s spell again.  However, when unnerving things begin happening, she turns to Sully to help figure out who is behind the vague threats.

Amb has worked hard to forget what happened during her freshman year at college. Back then, she was desperate to belong. After she becomes friends with charismatic Sully, she brings out all of Amb’s worst instincts. The two young women party hard and embark on numerous one-night stands.

Amb’s roommate, Flora Banning, could not be more different than her and Sully. She is sweet, caring and studious and since she has a long-distance boyfriend, she attends very few parties. After events spiral out of control, Amb wants nothing more than to leave her regrets and bad memories behind her.

The college reunion is Amb’s worst nightmare.  She is under incredible stress as she worries about what Sully might say or do. And she must face the girls who know the secrets she is keeping. Then there are the unnerving things that let her know that someone knows what she and Sully did their freshman year. What does this person want from them? And who could be behind what is happening at the reunion?

The Girls Are All So Nice Here is an incredibly riveting mystery. Few of the characters are likable and even as adults, many of them continue to be “mean girls”.  The chapters weave back and forth in time with the tension ratcheting up as Amb and Sully’s actions hurtle to a shocking conclusion.  Laurie Elizabeth Flynn brings this mesmerizing mystery to an absolutely shocking dénouement.

I absolutely loved and highly recommend this engrossing mystery to fans of the genre.

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