SUICIDE NOTES FROM BEAUTIFUL GIRLS by Lynn Weingarten

Pitched as Gone Girl meets Thirteen Reasons Why

June barely has time to mourn the death of her best friend Delia, before Delia's ex-boyfriend convinces her Delia was murdered, and June is swept into a tangle of lies, deceit, and conspiracy.

The very beginning of Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls seemed very promising and mysterious.  There were so many twists, turns, and leads that it was almost dizzying, and I liked trying to figure out for myself just what had happened to June’s (mostly former) best friend, Delia. If there was one good thing about this book, it would be the beginning and how put together the plot seemed to be. There were a lot of different things going on, but it all seemed to fit together and make sense, creating this beautiful mystery that just begged to be solved. But then while I loved this aspect, there were just too many things about this particular book that I did not like.

Throughout the book, June has some flashbacks of her and Delia’s past together. It was here that I found out that I really don’t like Delia. For one, she is in plenty of ways a terrible friend. But June still loves her (she acted kind of like a lost puppy for the majority of the book), because she relies on Delia for everything. Delia can sabotage June all she wants, because she knows that June will just take it and still like her. Second, she was super creepy. She thought things that just weren’t right, weren’t normal, and I know that was the point but she seemed dangerous and it caused her to be the bad friend described above. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t go any further into that.

Another thing that I didn’t like about this book was all of the swearing. Especially the f-bombs. Those were out of control. I literally felt like there was one on every page, especially where Delia was concerned. So if you have a sensitivity to language, then I definitely wouldn’t recommend this read.

Overall, I mark this down as a very dark and mature read. There is sexual content - the fade to black kind without any detail, but in every case it was too weird or wrong for it to be romantic in any way. The language was already discussed above as really strong, and I didn’t find any characters to be good role models.

I give this book 2 stars.

***GREAT BIG THANK YOU TO SIMON PULSE FOR A REVIEW COPY***