Review: The Girls Are All So Nice Here

Title: The Girls Are All So Nice Here
Author: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Purchased
Format: Paperback
Release Date: March 9, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here opens when Ambrosia Wellington receives an invitation to her ten-year college reunion. Only, slipped in with all the expected information about lodging and the weekend’s schedule is an anonymous letter that says: “It’s time to talk about what we did.” Instantly, Ambrosia realizes that the secrets of her past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she’d thought. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did—and who she did it with. Larger-than-life Sloane Sullivan (“Sully”), who could make anyone do anything. The game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else, and the girl, Amb’s angelic roommate, who paid the price.

Amb had thought that she and Sully had gotten away with what they did their first semester at Wesleyan. But as Amb receives increasingly menacing messages during the reunion, it becomes clear that she’s being circled by someone who wants more than just the truth. Amb discovers that her own memories don’t tell the whole story, and that her actions and friendship with Sully had even more disturbing consequences than she ever imagined.

Told in alternating timelines between the reunion and Ambrosia’s turbulent first months of college, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a gripping rollercoaster ride of a novel that examines the dark complexities of female friendship and the brutal lengths girls can go to take what they think they are owed.

Review:

Ambrosia Wellington gets an invitation to her ten year college reunion, but she isn’t planning on going until she gets a threatening note that says, “It’s time to talk about what we did.” When Ambrosia was at college, she was roommates with Flora Banning, a sweet and innocent girl with a boyfriend at another college. Ambrosia was interested in getting a more exciting college experience so she became friends with Sloan “Sully” Sullivan, the party girl. Sully liked to play games with girls and boys, and always have a good time. While Ambrosia is at the reunion, she continues to get threatening messages. She has to come to terms with what she did in school, and realize that maybe her memories aren’t as reliable as she thought.

This story was so intense. Throughout the first half of the story, I was certain that I had figured out the ending. However, there was a twist halfway through that showed me that I was completely wrong. The final chapters were so suspenseful that I was holding my breath. This was definitely a wild story.

This story had a very dark tone. There is some potentially triggering content, such as bullying, suicide, overdose, rape, and cheating. This content was quite intense at times and difficult to read. It was discomforting to read, but these are things that do happen on college campuses. These topics made for an uncomfortable read at times, but the story was so intricately plotted, that I had to give it five full stars.

This was a dark and intense thriller.

What to read next:

Have you read The Girls Are All So Nice Here? What did you think of it?