We had read Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé's debut novel Ace of Spades for book club, and since our girl Nadine loves a book with murder mystery vibes she chose Àbíké-Íyímídé's sophmore novel Where Sleeping Girls Lie as her book club pick for July. I was personally excited to read it because 1) I feel like I had seen it everywhere and 2) it had deep dark academic boarding school vibes to me, and I've always loved a YA boarding school book. However... this book was not a hit with us. Our main problems with it were how messy the many plot points ended up being. Clues were dropped or mentioned that never paid off. The little notes scattered throughout never really end up mattering either. We also thought this novel would actually make more sense if the characters were in college instead of high school. In my heart, this is like a 3.5, but since Goodreads will never embrace a nuanced rating system I gave it four stars. I do appreciate its ambition, and I love anytime teen girls and their friends band together to take down bad boys. But Àbíké-Íyímídé perhaps tried to do too much. If she had scaled back and tried to tackle less, she would have been more successful.

Now, my friend Sarah absolutely hated this book and could not get through it. She sent us her notes she took as she read, and I'm going to share a few of them here because honestly, they're gold.

"Oh my GOSH. She’s also ripping off Mean Girls a bit here. Homeschooler goes to high school and immediately gets introduced to all the cliques- don’t tell me, she gets inducted into the popular crowd?"

"STOP, they just ripped off the Plastics. I can’t do this."

“Unlike people, plants are honest. If they’re hungry, they’ll tell you.” LMAO GIRL WHAT"