THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB

4 stars out of 5

Silly me: I started this one late in the day before we had a houseful of guests hungry for turkey and all the trimmings. That day, I tossed the 20+ pound bird in the oven around 10 a.m., and coupled with other "stuff" I'd made and the mountain of goodies trucked in by family and friends, it was a big hit. That made me happy, of course, but in the back of my mind I kept hoping everyone would find their way to the door before nightfall, leaving me a couple of hours to get back to reading.

That's because within the first quarter or so of the book, I was hooked. Chapters shift from present day to 1991, when four young friends - Heather, Gia, Becca and Rachel - formed what they called the Dead Girls Club because they loved to read and talk about all things macabre. Becca in particular was quite talented when it came to making up stories that sounded totally real; her best (or worst, depending on your belief in the occult) was about a centuries-old wicked witch called the Red Lady. Becca's took her determination to prove that the Red Lady was more than a figment of her imagination to extreme lengths - alienating her friends and culminating in her death (not insignificantly, by Heather's hand). Heather, of course, never admitted what she'd done, Becca's body was never found and ultimately another woman convicted of the crime and sent to jail. 

Fast-forward to the here and now, when a happily married Heather is a psychologist who helps troubled girls at the Silverstone Center - perhaps a compensation of sorts for her acts some 30 years ago. She's totally lost touch with the other two childhood friends, but when she gets an envelope in the mail that contains a necklace she thought (make that hoped) was gone forever, the past suddenly looms over the present. Heather becomes convinced that someone - one of those childhood friends, perhaps - knows what really happened to Becca and wants to see Heather punished.

Other clues that someone wants to "out" Heather start to appear, and that's when I started to become less enchanted with her. I've never cared for extreme paranoia, especially in female characters; and while Heather's concerns are for the most part understandable under the circumstances, she does, to put it mildly, start to over-think what happens every single minute of every single day. But she doesn't stop there; instead, she goes to extreme lengths to find out who's behind it all, doubting anybody and everybody in the process, including her loving husband. 

Bit by bit, the truth begins to emerge, with everything coming together near the end as a few surprises are revealed. I'm not sure how happy I was at the conclusion of Heather's journey, but I'll certainly say it was for the most part an exciting trip. I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters (Crooked Lane Books, December 2019); 282 pp.