Review: Undead Girl Gang

Ｔｉｔｌｅ：Undead Girl Gang

Ａｕｔｈｏｒ：Lily Anderson

Ｓｅｒｉｅｓ：Standalone

Ｒａｔｉｎｇ：★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

＊Ｎｏｔｅ：You can find the Mini Review here.

Mila Flores and her best friend Riley have always been inseparable. There’s not much excitement in their small town of Cross Creek, so Mila and Riley make their own fun, devoting most of their time to Riley’s favorite activity: amateur witchcraft.

So when Riley and two Fairmont Academy mean girls die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone’s explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life.

Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders, but they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer…before the killer strikes again.

✩ Mila was loyal and dedicated. She was very focused and driven. Oh, and very, very sassy ❤

✩ Riley was selfish and very whiny. She was moody and just honestly kind of bitchy.

❝ The problem with your best friend dying is that there’s no one to sit with you at funerals. It’s not the number one problem. Obviously, my best friend’s bloated, waterlogged corpse being lowered into the earth for the rest of eternity is currently at the top of my list of Emotionally Debilitating Things That Will Take the Rest of My Life to Recover From. But sharing my pew with strangers while Ms. Chu, the principal of Fairmont Academy, drones on and on definitely ranks high on the list of reasons why my friend being murdered is the pits. ❞

I first reviewed this book in a Mini-Review when I received a sample on NetGalley. When I first read this book I fell in love with the author’s writing style and the main character, Mila. There was so much sass and passion in Mila that just spilled onto the pages. It made me really want to know more about her and her best friend. Of course, being a fan of crime shows and the paranormal/supernatural genres, I was also really looking forward to cracking the mystery of who was murdering the girls in town. And let’s not forget the “girl gang” part of the title; I couldn’t wait to meet the other female characters and see how they worked together.

In my head, I pictured a group of tough girls getting together to get their revenge. I pictured sass, genie ace, magic, and sisterhood, but in the end, I was kind of let down.

Now, I won’t say that this book was horrible or that didn’t get some of those things to some degree, but it did feel like the story dragged on too long before I got some sort of payoff. That being said, the pacing was definitely a big issue for me in this book. It felt like very little progress was being to find the girls’ killer. Really, it wasn’t until the last couple of chapters that we started making process in that direction. And once the ball for rolling things moved very quickly. The ending felt rushed and a little sloppy. It made it hard to enjoy finally getting those answers I wanted for so long because they came too easily within the span of just a couple of chapters instead of being spaced out throughout the book.

❝ I don’t forgive. I’m a Taurus. ❞

Then there were the characters themselves. It was hard to connect to anyone other than Mila because the rest of the girls (Riley especially) were so aggravating and moody. They were all selfish in their own ways, in the sense that they just wanted to enjoy the week they had and didn’t seem to care about the murderer. Mila was the only one who really seemed interested in getting justice. They didn’t work together at all and it was just frustrating.

And sadly, magic seemed to play a very minimal part in the story. I could’ve dealt with the magic being minimal if I had at least gotten a gripping plot/quest to solve the under mystery with a gang of strong, powering teenagers instead of whiny, stuck up girls.

Overall, it was an okay book, but it failed to deliver on the expectations it built up in those first initial chapters. It was a fun weekend read, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite.