I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten Published by Simon Pulse on July 7th 2015
Pages: 336
Goodreads
They say Delia burned herself to death in her stepfather’s shed. They say it was suicide.
But June doesn’t believe it.
June and Delia used to be closer than anything. Best friends in that way that comes before everyone else—before guys, before family. It was like being in love, but more. They had a billion secrets, tying them together like thin silk cords.
But one night a year ago, everything changed. June, Delia, and June’s boyfriend, Ryan, were just having a little fun. Their good time got out of hand. And in the cold blue light of morning, June knew only this—things would never be the same again.
Now Delia is dead. June is certain she was murdered. And she owes it to her to find out the truth…which is far more complicated than she ever could have imagined.
Sexy, dark, and atmospheric, Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls will keep you guessing until the very last page.
Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls is not a book I expected to finish at 2 in the morning after what became just over a 2 hour binge. I expected Th13teen Reasons Why: the redux. I mean synopsis straight up compares the two. Now some of you may remember how I felt about Th13rteen Reasons Why. It was good for one read but many of the characters were much too shallow for my taste and I ended up shoving it to the very back of my shelves (I’m still keeping it because it’s signed and personalized, not because I’ll read it again.)
Well for anyone else under this impression let me say this: this book kicks Th13rteen Reasons Why’s ass.
Suicide Notes hits every mark that Th13rteen Reasons missed. Where Reasons came off as shallow, Suicide Notes has so many layers that it’ll make your head spin. Think you know what’s happening? Try again. Now you have it? Well now you don’t. Got a theory? Sit down and shut up, you’re wrong. That’s what I felt like the author was saying to me every time I thought I had a grip on what was going on. This book is just a series of rugs being pulled out from under you.
Suicide Notes was understandably pretty dark, just the way I like my contemporary. But I was even surprised at the extent of the darkness. A lot of that has to do with the twist, something I cannot go into in this non spoilery review. If dark contemp YA is your thing, then this is right up your alley. Suicide is not just an “issue” book as some people call them, it’s much deeper than that. (Also, can we please stop calling them JUST issue books?) I was almost reminded of Danielle Vega’s The Merciless at more than one point while I was reading. Yeah, a few of the characters are THAT kind of unstable. Just think about that for a second.
Now, I do have one little thing to put in the negative for this book. In the grand scheme of this book it’s tiny, but it’s something that really pulled me out of the story for a second. There’s a point where the main character is talking about the way her heart is beating:
The wet meat of my heart is flinging itself against the walls of my ribcage.
*blink blink*
Wet meat? What a visceral, kind of disgusting word choice. Thanks for that image, Weingarten. I just could not get past how weird that word choice is! Once my brain supplied the lovely sound effects to go with that sentence I had to just pretend I hadn’t read it and continue on with the story like nothing happened. What else can you say about that?
I really loved this book, which I kind of didn’t see coming. Neither did I see the dark contemporary reading marathon it would trigger. After two weeks for barely reading more than 10 pages in my previous book (Truthwitch, I’ll get back to you eventually) it was nice to finally break the slump with something REALLY good. I loved it and it definitely earned its place on my shelf.
Now, this book brought on a lot of feelings and opinions that I can’t share in a non spoiler review. So this book will be getting a second, very spoiler filled, post in which i talk about all the things I had to gloss over here. If you read the book you can go check that one out, if not I’m gonna advise that you don’t.
What did you think of this book? Share your own thoughts in the comments.
From my shelf to yours,
I really enjoyed this book, too! I thought that it was wild when it needed to be wild and calm when it needed to be calm. I also thought the plot was just really good. I wasn’t expecting the huge twists, and I don’t want to spoil anyone who hasn’t read this, but they really made the book.