Going into it, I really didn't expect the book to be too good. Thank you Katie Alender for bringing me back to those childhood moments of sneaking a flashlight into my room and reading beneath the covers. We tend to gorge ourselves on this genre in younger years, with Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark, but we seem to lose it as we get older. There are far too few truly creepy YA books out there. Instead, we see these relationships grow and develop (albeit under extreme circumstances) and Alexis begins to see the value in each, especially the love for her family.

The cheerleader is not all villain, there is no insta-love and the sisters do not bond over boys and shopping. She continues this development and I hope by the third book in the series will have become a character I can be proud of.Īlender also does quite a good job of painting realistic relationships, between Alexis and her 'arch enemy', her crush and her sister. I have encountered these types of character before, but I am very pleased that in Alexis' case, all of her growing up does not occur within the first book. This is the character that you realize has a lot of growing up to do and hope that she does. This is not the character you root for from the beginning. She often goes out of her way to spread rumors about those who have hurt her in the past. She is usually callous and sometimes mean. The story falls on the shoulders of Alexis who is, at best, a deeply flawed character. She is also incredibly skilled at writing scenes that begin with the easily explained and end with the truly terrifying. Katie Alender does an excellent job of creating that delicious sense of suspense that only truly great scary stories can achieve. Even so, I could only read it in bed if my husband was there. This is my second time reading Bad Girls Don't Die. Alexis knows she's the only person who can stop Kasey - but what if that green-eyed girl isn't even Kasey anymore?

Doors open and close by themselves water boils on the unlit stove and an unplugged air conditioner turns the house cold enough to see their breath in.Īlexis wants to think that it's all in her head, but soon, what she liked to think of as silly parlor tricks are becoming life-threatening-to her, her family, and to her budding relationship with the class president. Kasey is acting stranger than ever: her blue eyes go green sometimes she uses old-fashioned language and she even loses track of chunks of time, claiming to know nothing about her strange behavior. When a family fight results in some tearful sisterly bonding, Alexis realizes that her life is creeping from dysfunction into danger. Dysfunctional like her parents' marriage her doll-crazy twelve-year-old sister, Kasey and even her own anti-social, anti-cheerleader attitude. Alexis thought she led a typically dysfunctional high school existence.

Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Alender