HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
By: Lexie Elliott
Published: August 17, 2021
Publisher: Berkley
Mystery/Thriller
If the title doesn’t grab your attention, then the first chapter will. Georgie, Lissa, and Bronwyn have been best friends since their college swim team days. Swimming has been their passion, their escape, and what tied the three of them together. Until, Lissa, the strongest swimmer of the three of them, has drowned at the remote island resort she owned with her husband. How can this be?
“We’re a three-legged stool that lost a leg. We have to find a new way to balance.”
Lexie Elliott, HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
When Georgie and Bronwyn join Lissa’s closest friends and her husband at the resort for her funeral, weird things begin to happen. They seem to be the only people on the resort since all the guests left after Lissa’s death and rumors of a serpent in the water scared them off. Is that how Lissa drowned? Then disturbing messages are left for Georgie and Bronwyn that start to make them wonder if this really was just an accident.
“It’s not hard to commit murder, is it? It’s the getting away with it that’s difficult.”
Lexie Elliott, HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
As with any thriller, you never know who you can trust in the story. Georgie and Bronwyn share alternating chapters revealing the history of their friendships and what is happening at the resort. But, in between those chapters, are short chapters that offer ways to kill your best friend and why that method may or may not work. The problem, as the reader finds out, is that no method is fool-proof. Not everything is always what it seems in these types of novels and there is a bit of secrecy and unreliable information which makes for good twists. I have to admit I felt a bit nervous during one of the ocean scenes and it sent my anxiety really high. There are several scenes located in the ocean and one in an ocean cave that required me to put the book down until morning so I didn’t have bad dreams. I found I was better off just reading this one during the daytime.
“The universe takes a perverse joy in making sure our secrets don’t stay secret for long.”
Lexie Elliott, HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
Most of the characters were likable and I enjoyed trying to figure out what each person might be hiding. Elliott takes time to tell their backstories and why this group is so close and yet so mistrustful of each other. The setting was eerie and full of doom which played into the creepiness of the big reveal towards the end.
Secrets and lies never go well together and for this group of friends, it spelled TROUBLE. Pick this one up if you like twisted storylines of friendships gone wrong and surprise endings.
I reviewed Elliott’s debut novel, THE FRENCH GIRL, which was also about best friends from college, a murder, and long-held secrets. Scroll down for more of my thoughts on that one.
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Posted Under Book Review, fiction, Lexie Elliott, mystery, suspense, thriller