TBR: They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman

They Wish They Were Us is a mystery/suspense novel that reminded me an awful lot of the book A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. The plots are eerily similar to a certain point, except I’d argue that A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder gets the job of navigating through its plot better. Essentially, the book introduces a particular group of students at the elite and rich Gold Coast Prep High School who call themselves the Players, which I found personally to be reminiscent of the squid people in the popular Netflix series Squid Game. As you can tell, this book reminded me a lot of stuff I’ve read/seen in the past, but perhaps if you haven’t been exposed to the same sorts of things, you’ll find yourself enjoying this book more than I did. The plot is centered around the central character of the story, high school senior Jill Newman, trying to uncover the truth behind the death of her best friend Shaila Arnold during their freshman year. Thus far, it has kind of just been accepted by the Gold Coast community that Shaila’s boyfriend, Graham, was behind Shaila’s death, but Jill wishes to challenge that throughout the book. Overall, I’d have to say that I was disappointed by this book for a couple of key reasons. 

First off, the plot. How do I put this? It’s just too… unoriginal and kind of boring, to be honest. To be fair to Jessica Goodman, maybe I have gotten a bit jaded to these types of books because I do enjoy myself a good mystery/suspense story, and I’ve been reading/watching a lot of those lately. At least A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder added its own creative twists and made the plot generally more exciting by, for example, adding more scenes throughout the book where the main character is hunting for clues. The clues for Jill in this book just come too easily. A character named Kara emails all the clues to Jill, and another character named Rachel helps her sort and obtain those clues as well. Jill conveniently finds a (*spoiler spoiler) set of earrings belonging to Shaila in Adam’s dresser in the short time she’s in his room alone. It’s just all set up nice and easy for Jill, which makes the story unrealistic and flat-out unappealing. 

Second, the characters. I just don’t and didn’t care for any of the characters in the plot. Now, of course, this isn’t to say that you’ll feel the same way. It’s simply that the author barely gives any reason for readers to root for the characters. Jill, the chief protagonist of the story, is just portrayed, in my opinion, as weak and not really someone who possesses leadership traits. In other words, just not really someone worth rooting or. In the end, she is shown to have more initiative and resolve, but even the character development just felt unnatural and sudden. It’s not that I believe that kind of character development can’t be seen in a novel such as this one or any book in general –it’s, I believe, simply the fault of the author in how she executed and conveyed it. (*major spoilers ahead) Third, although this kind of has to do with the first point, I was able to correctly predict the actual murderer of Shaila, a Gold Coast Prep graduate named Adam who Jill is smitten with, for crying out loud. It doesn’t take a detective to figure it out, I promise you. The major giveaway is when Adam is talking with Jill at a cafe when they’re out together and verbally degrades/bad-mouths Rachel, the sister of now-in-jail Graham to Jill. I  figured that the author, since she had undertaken the task of writing a whole book about this mystery and had to make it entertaining, she would most likely show that Graham was not the real murderer and that it was in fact somebody else. Combining this with Adam’s conversation with Jill, it didn’t take a lot for me to connect the dots and suspect Adam of being Shaila’s killer. There aren’t even any other good suspects –no scratch that, there’s only 1 other but overall unconvincing suspect, period. It’s just so obvious who the real culprit is. In conclusion, They Wish They Were Us is a meh sort of book. It’s not particularly outstanding in any way in my opinion but passable as a read. If you’re more of casual reader and enjoy books in the mystery/suspense/even horror genres, I think this book may suit your tastes. See you next time!