Title: Perfect Little Monsters
Author: Cindy R.X. He
Publication: May 7, 2024
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Genre: Teens, YA Fiction, Mystery, Suspense
Pages: 336
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SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
Ella Moore was the most popular girl in school…and also the most hated. When she’s murdered at her own party, there are too many suspects to count–and too many people who think she deserved it. The police’s prime suspect is the new girl, Dawn Foster. She was the last to hand Ella a drink on the night Ella died. Plus, all of Ella’s friends with a motive for wanting her dead are more than willing to implicate Dawn.
But Dawn refuses to go down without a fight. She’s determined to clear her name. As she delves deeper into the past, she discovers that Ella and her friends had enemies, and someone is out for revenge. She must uncover the truth before the police arrest the wrong suspect and before the next person dies.
REVIEW
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
I love a good mean girl murder mystery and Perfect Little Monsters by Cindy R.X. He brought it! The best part of these is that you never know who to suspect because they are all guilty sounding and behaving and He maintained that questionable mentality through the entire book!
The story follows Dawn as she is newer to the school and kind of hanging out with the popular crowd when the queen bee herself is murdered and Dawn is suspect number one. She’s the easy one to blame, the last person to hand the victim a drink, and everyone else has zipped up their mouths and unwilling to help Dawn. He made me question every single character, even the ones I kind of trusted at times, and I even thought maybe Dawn was guilty for a while. I won’t tell you who actually was guilty, but I’ll tell you this… there’s a bunch of wrong guesses between page one and the final page!
The signs of a really good writer, to me, is when you make me love or hate a character. I’m not talking basic hate, either. I’m talking to the bones hatred and these girls are the kind I love to hate down to my bones! They are mean for no reason, coniving, selfish and just ugly to their cores. I love feeling that way about characters I’m reading and He really did a great job at writing these teens so that we would thoroughly despise almost everyone.
I think the only thing keeping it from a five stars is that I am big on believability and there was just a bit too much sloppy police work for me to believe everything. I do get that money speaks volumes and cops sometimes take the easy way out and convinct the easiest option, but there were moments I couldn’t get on board with the sheer disregard for the obvious from the police in this story.
With that said, it really didn’t take much away from me enjoying it and if you are less serious about how believable it is, because after all… it is fiction… then this book is going to be five stars to you! He is new on the market and I just learned she has another book out, so I will definitely be picking that up soon to read! If you love a really good who-dun-it YA Fiction full of terrible teens, this is the book for you! You will be flipping pages faster than you can read trying to see who it was in the end.
