Confessions of a Literary Addict

This review is spoiler-free!

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Mystery
Release Date: May 8th 2018 by Razorbill
Format: Hardcover, 305 pages
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Find it here: Goodreads || Book Depository

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.

I feel like I was outside the majority for this one, but I was super unimpressed by this book! I went in thinking it would be about witches and zombies, and, well it was, but. Not … really? I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but I’m going to try.

It was more about a murder mystery than anything, honestly. The witchcraft came second to that, and then the zombie factor third. This wouldn’t really have bothered me, had Mila not been such an annoying narrative. Like, I get it. She’s a high schooler, she’s against the adults, blah blah blah. Call me old, but I found the significance of her defiance not only annoying, but just plain bratty. Yes, her best friend died and, yeah, the adults are overbearing and should probably step back a bit, but she didn’t have to be a jerk.

Actually, she was pretty much a jerk to everyone except a specific character, which, looking back, ruined some of the story elements for me. Sometimes it made sense, but a lot of the time it just seemed like she was doing it to simply do it, which rubbed me the wrong way.

Other things to note: I didn’t find the twist surprising, like, at all. Which is depressing, because I had been expecting to, well, not expect it. And yet, I did. In addition, the actual ending to the book was what really knocked me down to what would have been a three star rating (because I did love the interactions between Mila and the zombie girls) to a two, and almost to a flat out one star. I was pretty baffled by how nonchalant it all was, and I couldn’t get over it as I read through the final chapter.

Needless to say, I really wasn’t a fan.

It was totally bad, though. I really did enjoy the interactions between Mila and the three zombie girls (her best friend and then two other girls who had died), and, had the book been more about that side of things, I probably would have been able to look past the faults a little bit more. But it wasn’t, and I didn’t, and, really, this just wasn’t the book for me.

Can’t win them all!

Thanks for reading!