Good Girls Die First, Kathryn Foxfield | Book Review

Falling Kingdoms is a young adult fantasy book series by talented author Morgan Rhodes. I went in knowing very little and came out feeling addicted and like I needed to continue on with this epic story!

Good Girls Die First, Kathryn Foxfield

Themes: YA, thriller, mystery, horror, maybe a little fantasy?

Reading Format: Paperback

3 STARS // 5.5 CAWPILE

Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no extra cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Thank you very much to Scholastic for sending me through an early release of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Let’s start off by saying this book was so different from what I was expecting and I don’t even know. I thought this book would really steer down the YA thriller route, but it surprised me and was much more horror-based than I expected with a bit of fantasy too. It sort of reminded me of Other Words for Smoke in terms of the villain and the way the fantasy collided with real life in a creepy way.

This book is about ten teens who are all anonymously invited to a burnt down, ruin of a carnival with the question ‘can you keep a secret?’. They are all very different and don’t really know why they’re there, but they all seem to be hiding their own secret. Gradually over the course of days, the mystery unfolds and the horror of the plot sets in. That’s all I’ll say about the plot. And honestly, I don’t really know what I was thinking for half of this book. It managed to scare me within the first 50 pages, which I was reading near to midnight and refused to leave my room to pee for fear of god knows what hiding in the shadows.

After the initial creepy moment, I found I wasn’t quite as surprised by this book and felt it kind of spelt out the plot for me from this point onwards. So I think I lost the intrigue element a little, the more I read. But I was interested in seeing how the characters unwove as the writing explored them more in the situation of trauma. I have to say though, I didn’t really like any of the characters, they were all incredibly flawed, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. This book has a dark atmosphere and I feel like the characters have dark souls to match.

I enjoyed that this book was set in the UK (I’m fairly sure?), which I quite liked. I always like reading a book set in the same area as me because I feel we don’t get enough big YA thriller books set in the UK. The setting itself though is definitely suited to the horror genre, it is dark, run-down and somewhere easy to get lost. It fits perfectly in the nightmare setting, which makes it an interesting setting to read about.

My reason for giving this book a three-star review is that it was missing something, something I can’t put my finger on. I felt like I was pulled in but then the plot wasn’t varied enough to keep me hooked. The setting didn’t change so we felt isolated, and I certainly thought that Foxfield writes this feeling well. But for me, there were almost too many different storylines going on at once to really feel gripped and intrigued as the book progressed. Overall though, I did enjoy this book and would recommend it to fans of thrillers with a slight fantasy/different turn.

Buy Good Girls Die First | Amazon | Waterstones

plan it