Review: All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth

 

Publication Date: July 2018 (Goodreads)

Publisher: Penguin Books

Blurb: 

In the last day of summer, Grace Fairchild, the beautiful young wife of real estate mogul Allister Calloway, vanished from the family’s lake house without a trace, leaving behind her seven-year old daughter, Charlie, and a slew of unanswered questions.

Years later, seventeen-year-old Charlie still struggles with the dark legacy of her family name and the mystery surrounding her mother. Determined to finally let go of the past, she throws herself into life at Knollwood, the prestigious New England school she attends. Charlie quickly becomes friends with Knollwood’s “it” crowd.

Charlie has also been tapped by the A’s—the school’s elite secret society well known for terrorizing the faculty, administration, and their enemies. To become a member of the A’s, Charlie must play The Game, a semester-long, diabolical high-stakes scavenger hunt that will jeopardize her friendships, her reputation, even her place at Knollwood.

As the dark events of past and present converge, Charlie begins to fear that she may not survive the terrible truth about her family, her school, and her own life.

When I picked this up, I had been eyeing it for a while and was excited for some messy rich kid drama with a summery backdrop. And while it did deliver in that, there was a little lacking for me in some areas. 

The mystery thriller element was interesting but sometimes the twists and turns felt to me like they came out of nowhere. It began to feel a little random in the middle and I was starting to lose my grasp of what the timeline was and what was actually going on. The conclusion to the mystery was what I had thought it was from the beginning so that left me a little disappointed. 

The characters were definitely giving rich kid brat stereotype and I enjoyed reading about the secret cool kid club that made whoever wanted to join do crazy dangerous dares. Very interesting seeing the mentality of these teenagers wanting to push themselves into the face of danger just to join a secret club. Also the side characters all kind of blurred into one, there wasn't really too much variation or unique aspects to them so I found myself flipping back a lot to try remind myself who this person was. 

There was a lot of slightly uncomfortable vibes between cousins, the way the main character would describe male characters she was related to was ... odd. Bit too descriptive about how muscly or handsome they were. There was also a dared kiss which was just so weird and uncomfortable I think it was the beginning of the death of enjoyment for me of the book. 

Overall the book was a fun read - the messy rich people drama was fun but it wholly fell flat for me. A good quick read but sometimes confusing.