She Started It by Sian Gilbert

She Started It

by Sian Gilbert

Genre:

Thriller, Mystery, Fiction, Contemporary, Suspense, Chick Lit, Crime

Published:

June 13, 2023

Pages: 352

My Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐/5 stars

Description:

For fans of Lucy Foley and Liane Moriarty, She Started It is a hot, twisty summer debut thriller about a group of young women whose Caribbean bachelorette party takes a sinister turn. It’s Lord of the Flies meets And Then There Were None...but with Instagram and too much prosecco. The party of a lifetime is nothing like what they expected... Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends—or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets have kept them bonded for better or worse, even as their childhood dreams haven’t quite turned out as they’d hoped. Then one day they receive a wholly unexpected—but not entirely unwelcome—invitation from another old friend. Poppy Greer has invited them all to her extravagant bachelorette party: a first-class plane ticket to three days of white sand, cocktails, and relaxation on a luxe private island in the Bahamas. None of them has spoken to Poppy in years. But Poppy’s Instagram pics shows that the girl they used to consider the weakest link in their group has definitely made good—and made money. Curiosity gets the better of them. Besides, who can turn down a posh all-expenses-paid vacation on a Caribbean island? The first-class flight and the island’s accommodations are just as opulent as expected...even if the scenic island proves more remote than they’d anticipated. Quite remote, in fact, with no cell service, and no other guests. The women quickly discover they’ve underestimated Poppy, and each other. As their darkest secrets are revealed, the tropical adventure morphs into a terrifying nightmare. Endlessly twisty, sharply observant, and deliciously catty, She Started It is sure to shock readers until the very end.

My Thoughts:

I can definitely say I hate binged this one. Like the plot wasn’t bad and the writing kept me reading - but man was it annoying. First off, I called the main plot twist from like page 30 and hoped I was wrong but I was infuriatingly correct. Then I was able to guess some of the other little twists as well. Mainly- WHY WOULD YOU TRUST A FREE VACA FROM A GIRL YOU INTENSELY BULLIED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND HAVEN’T HEARD FROM IN 10 YEARS?!!!

These MCs were all incredibly unlikable and there were so many plot holes that just didn’t make sense. The writing was decent and the book did keep me interested. I basically read it in 2 sessions so I think this will be a great summer beachy thriller for some readers. But personally the twists stuck out so much it ruined it for me . The characters were confusing in the beginning because they were all basically the same person and were just whiny and stuck up.

Poppy’s diary entries also bothered me because not a single person who owns a diary writes that descriptive in it. I can’t remember a convo I had 10 minutes ago let alone writing exact conversations down with correct punctuation in a diary

2.5⭐️ rounded up to 3 only because it kept my interest for whatever reason. It’s basically a huge recap of a bunch of mean girls bullying someone and then decide to use her for a free vaca while thinking she would just forget about the awful things they did. It also seemed open-ended so idk if author is trying to make a second one??