The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a twisty thriller about toxic friendships and obsession. Set at a prestigious US college, Wesleyan, it tells the story of Ambrosia who is desperate to fit in and to understand the rules of the strange and elite world she finds herself in. She wants to find her place among the ‘nice’, privileged girls who surround her, that is until she meets troubled but charismatic Sully. Amb and Sully become incredibly close but it’s a friendship marked by obsession, jealousy and a need to impress. Nobody can avoid Sully’s charm and Amb simultaneously fears her and wants to be her.

Determined to impress, Amb is pulled into Sully’s games, never knowing what the consequences might be for the other girls or for herself…

This debut thriller made for uncomfortable but addictive reading. It’s brutal, twisty and unrelenting. Whenever I thought I had the mystery pinned down (and I was so certain at one point!) the story took me in another direction. If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear what your theories were!

I saw a lot of similarities between this book and The Divines by Ellie Eaton, which I read at the start of March. If you enjoyed one, I’d definitely recommend the other! However, unlike in The Divines where I was often keen to get back to older storyline, I found the story being told over two timelines in The Girls Are All So Nice Here – one in the present at a college reunion and one ten years earlier – really added to the story and the tension.

This is a book that is genuinely hard to put down. If you read it, I can’t wait to hear what you think!

The Girls Are All So Nice Here was a dark and wild ride. The girls were definitely not so nice. I was shocked how far these characters went for the sake of entertainment. I instantly thought of the infamous quote from Abbott’s Dare Me.

“There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”

Amb is eager to impress ultimate mean girl, Sully. Sully is looking to find someone willing to come to her level. Things get dangerous fast. We follow two timelines. One is during Amb’s college days and the other is 10 years later to the present time. I personally loved the two timelines and was equally invested in both.

While I was really interested in what was happening throughout the book, I was a little bothered by the lack of motivation. Boredom and finding people annoying really wasn’t reason enough for some of the things these girls did. Still, I was somehow invested. There are obviously some twists and turns and you are left feeling dizzy by the end! I really enjoyed this roller-coaster of a ride, but please be aware, there are very triggering topics!

If you were a fan of Dare Me, Mean Girls, or Pretty Little Liars growing up, then this is the perfect adult version to sink your teeth into!

Thank you to HQ and Netgalley for the arc! This title was released April 1, 2021.

Transport yourself to the giddy first term of university life where studying takes a back seat over love, relationships and self-discovery. In this thriller by Flynn, the writer demonstrates the basic need to be accepted – but, with alarming consequences.

I could not believe how many sexual encounters there were in this novel! It did not feel like being at university because of the distinct lack of studying. Flynn makes some reference to academia as Ambrosia’s grades slip – which is unsurprising considering how little she actually seems to do. Instead, we are transported to the life of a partying student who has prioritised friendship and acceptance above all.

On the surface, present-day Ambrosia is clearly hiding a secret to do with her past. Attending a university reunion is evidently her worst nightmare, but circumstances mean that Amb cannot escape it. With her supportive husband in tow, Amb is confident that she will get through this reunion relatively unscathed. However, as the narrative switches back to Amb’s first term at university, it is obvious that she was not the girl that we see now. I grew to intensely dislike Amb as a student because of how she treated others. Frustrated with her desire to prove herself to Sully, Amb completely destroys any potential, genuine friendships that could exist around her. As Amb grows more sexually active, she finds she is still not satisfied with who she is, desiring the ease that her best friend Sully displays. Yet, this only leads to hurt and tragedy.

I was shocked by the turn of events. Amb and Sully were typical “mean girls” and I think this is what makes the narrative a bit different from other thrillers. Instead of being presented with a targeted heroine, Amb is a clearly flawed protagonist. As my dislike increased from the past narrative, it fell into present-day. Therefore, I was keen to see Amb penalised for her actions. I could not understand her fascination with Sully and believed that there was more to the relationship than illustrated. Although my predictions were off the mark, the friendship between the two becomes more twisted as the years progress.

Flynn addresses the issue of identity and acceptance; how this can have a significant impact on one’s mental health. This, along with the recklessness of Amb’s behaviour, makes this quite a dark novel. Amb’s lack of care about herself is saddening, especially when contrasted with her roommate, Flora. They are an antithesis and I think this works with the novel’s title really well. On the one hand, everyone at university does seem nice – to an innocent Flora. However, it is people like Amb who appear nice but actually have hidden motives.

Amb is a destroyer and over the course of the story do we truly find out what this means. I thought the best part of the story was the unexpected ending. It really blew me away and was cleverly woven into the narrative. This made the book more explosive for an otherwise dark, sex-fuelled story about mean people picking on the innocent.

My first read from Flynn and I was interested in this story throughout. It did not have a “spark” with me until the very end, but I did enjoy watching how Amb’s actions did have consequences and retribution.

With thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

'The Girls Are All So Nice Here,' is a great, pulpy thriller about girls gone bad, and the things young women do to make themselves likeable to men and to their peers. I related a lot to Ambrosia's overwhelming desire to fit in in a new place and all of the fears, doubts and insecurities young women have when they start at university. The flashbacks to her time at college work better than the ones set in the present day, possibly because she's such a cow in the present day parts, it almost feels unbelievable. The end is so jaw-droppingly unexpected, you can't help but laugh at Laurie Elizabeth Flynn's daringness to include it. In the wrong hands, it wouldn't work. But here, it (just about) does. A great -and highly enjoyable - thing to read somewhere cozy on a rainy afternoon.

As soon as I read the description for this book I knew it would be a story that would captivate me, and I certainly wasn’t wrong.

Ambrosia is now a successful, fully grown woman who wants nothing more than to put the mistakes she made throughout her younger years firmly behind her. Now married to her husband Adrian who is several years younger than her, Ambrosia feels as though her life is being to settle down. That is until Adrian discovers that she has been invited to a reunion at her old college and is rather adamant that she should attend, and as Ambrosia is unable to come up with any feasible reasons as to why they can’t attend, she finds herself returning to the one place she so desperately wants to forget.

Adrian is the supportive husband, and insists that he would love to meet her old friends, and assures her that she should try her best to forget about all of the mean girls she had encountered there, but what he doesn’t seem to realise is that Ambrosia was in fact one of the meanest girls there was. When she receives a further email ‘you to come to – we need to talk about what we did that night’ Ambrosia is left with very little choice but to attend.

When she is reunited with some of the people who played a part in the devastating events of that evening, all of the secrets and lies Ambrosia believed were buried deep begin rising to the surface, and it is only a matter of time before her own involvement comes crashing down on her with force, leaving her to deal with the consequences to her past once and for all.

I don’t want to give too much away about this book as it is without a doubt one of those stories that will captivate you from the very first page. The story is told in such a chilling way, which has you on the edge of your seat as the story begins to unfold and you learn of the events that occurred all those years ago.

The story is told from both a past and present perspective, giving us deeper insight as to the impact of that night has had on Ambrosia as an adult, and the lasting affects she is left living with. With a strong cast of characters that each add a new insight to the story, you find yourself fully immersed in this world that has been created by the author.

Thrilling, well paced and full of drama and suspense, this is without a doubt one of the books that I will be talking about for a very long time to come.

"The Girls Are So Nice Here" follows the story of Ambrosia, who receives an invitation to a class reunion in her old collage, Wesleyan. Married to affable Adrian, Amb wants to forget about her college experiences from 10 years ago. She was one of the bad girls and bad things happen, so she is doing her best to forget and hides the past from her husband. But the past is catching up with her – so maybe it is finally time to meet some old friends and discover the truth?
The book is a psychological thriller dealing with themes of peer pressure, male gaze, sexualisation of girls, female friendship, and obsessive behaviour. Amb and Sully’s friendship is toxic and disturbing, and none of them are really a likeable character, but I found their portrayals realistic. The college parts of book were really dark and disturbing, and the tone of the whole book was unsettling and creepy, however I found towards the end that the plot was slowing down and became a bit repetitive. Even so, I think it was a suitably unnerving book, definitely worth reading.

These girls are absolutely far from nice, they are cannibals who eat parts of themselves in the mistaken belief that they are destroying each other, not realising that they are devouring their own mirror image. In a bid to emerge, butterfly like, into college life from their high school caterpillar existence, it is the one girl, Flora, who remains true to herself throughout all the trauma visited on her at Wesleyan .

Amb tells the story in 'now' and ' then' chapters, she has been running from the events of the first year she spent away from home and now, the ten year anniversary is here to make her face up to the truly terrible things that she was instrumental in creating.

Much like a cuckoo, she takes and steals what she perceives are the best bits of the other girls around her, becoming engaged in a toxic, mutually enabling relationship with bad girl Sloane Sullivan, known as Sully, who wrecks lives without consequence.

Her freedom to do exactly as she wishes with complete lack of regard to the fallout immediately attracts Amb to her, who has viewed college as a a place where she can be the person she has always felt she could be. Instead, under Sully's malign influence, she descends into this caricature of the person she thinks she is. The freedom she perceives from throwing off the shackles of trying to fit in is an illusion based on exchanging sexual favours for feeling needed, rebellion against conformity and that being 'nice' will get her precisely nowhere.

In reality, every time she returns to her dorm room and sees Flora, her too good to be true roommate, she is reminded of her inadequacies-totally creating a self fulfilling prophecy-and descends further into chaos until she turns on Flora with the most wicked betrayal of them all.

It is untrue to say that there are no nice girls here, there are, but Amb dpes not recognise them as such, she sees opportunities to steal and borrow other people's personalities and try them on for size, completely missing the point that this re-invention marks her out as nothing but a fake. However, in the contrasting narratives of Flora and her sister Poppy, attending Wesleyan 14 years later, there appear to have been very few lessons learnt.

What this raises is the issue of conformity, rebellion and the values we place on friendship born from necessity or convenience. Is it the fault of a patriarchal society that turns girls on each other by devaluing the very parts of their personality which makes them 'nice'? Is being nice really such a crime? And why do we continue to lie to ourselves about the traits we see in others, instead of valuing and uplifting them, what we see in others and we lack in ourselves, we seek to destroy?

The males seem to get away with it, they are passive recipients of the sexual favours doled out by drunken girls eager to please, whilst upholding this as a 'traditional' rite of passage. Amb's husband is not seen by her as a real person, more a source of irritation and you wonder why on earth she married him, she clearly finds his existence barely tolerable, but again, it is the expected norm and part of her re-invention as 'nice'. So when she and Aiden attend the school reunion, not only does she have to face up to the person she was, she has to become self aware of the person she still is,as soon as Sully re-appears, Amb falls back into her sidekick role very quickly.

The cumulative effect of seemingly victimless crimes are brought front and center, as Amb's husband Aidan becomes aware at the reunion that the woman he married is not someone he ever really knew. And then , there is the small matter of the handwritten invitation cards that brought both Amb and Sully back to the scene of the crime...but who wrote them and what plans do they have in store for them? Have Amb and Sully changed, have they grownup and will they take accountability for the wrongs that they have wreaked upon their fellow classmates?

This is a brilliant debut novel, deliciously dark and menacing with undertones of grief and redemption which I think will have one hell of a lot of buzz around it, and have readers discussing the events portrayed in it for quite some time. It is a dark academia novel which will have you thinking about how you were as a teen, the pressures on you to conform when the structures around you are removed after leaving home, and how you make yourself accountable for your actions. There is a reason why karma is often framed as being female.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a dangerous, heady and intoxicatingly addictive read that you cannot tear yourself away from. Flynn didn’t hesitate to go there in this psychological, twisted and disturbing exploration of possibly the most toxic friendship you’ve ever heard of.

It’s a dark and addictive mystery about toxic friendship, mixed with a bit of murder. I liked how Flynn didn’t shy away from making her characters truly unlikable, though they often stayed morally gray, allowing for nuance and discussion. Here, there are very very few likeable characters, instead they are mired in their fractured, complicated lives and relationships, often with some dark secrets bubbling beneath. You never completely emphasise with any of them, though you do get to peek into their heads and get some sense of why they do what they do. The final narration was unexpectedly brilliant and I particularly loved the exquisite ending. There’s no easy answers here and there was never really a chance for a truly happy ending.

It opens with a very good opening hook that drew me in straight away and left me desperately wanting to know more. I liked how the mystery was really teased out, with certain events remaining shrouded in shadow close to the end. You get a sense of this toxic bond between the two central characters and how this affected their every move. It’s like they’re locked in this endless battle masquerading as a friendship and it gives them motivation to do some truly awful things. Our main protagonist, Amb, is no sweetheart. Her actions are often despicable and unforgivable, particularly when her secret is revealed. That makes for some compelling reading though, as you are torn between glimmers of sympathy and deep hatred for her.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a dark exploration of toxic friendship and the lengths to which people to will go to in order to claim what they believe to be theirs. It’s a morally fraught and ambiguous book, even down to that perfectly sinister ending.

Rating: ★★★✯☆

(I've included trigger warnings for the book at the end of the review since they are slightly spoilery)

Wow, this book was intense. It was dark, twisted, shocking and so gripping. I've never felt so uncomfortable reading a thriller before. This book took "mean girls" to a whole other level. Every character, and I mean every character was awful. The main character, Ambrosia, was absolutely vile. I hated her so much. I hated her best friend even more.

One thing I really loved about this is how much it affects you. I was so in tune with the characters. Like this book made me anxious, angry, shocked, sad.... I was so invested. Laurie Flynn does an amazing job at pulling the reader in, and keeping them engaged.

I wasn't really sure about how I felt about the ending. I thought it was fitting, in the way that it's dark and twisted. It definitely fits the entire tone of the book. But I'm not sure, I thought it was quite random, I would've preferred things were wrapped up a little more? But that's just a personal preference thing.

Overall, I really enjoyed it, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for a psychological thriller with a "mean girls" plot line.

Trigger Warnings for this book: Rape, Self Harm, Suicide, Cheating, fat phobia

This was a dark, twisty, turny thriller.

Told in alternating timelines of Ambrosia's first year at university, and the present day when she is preparing to attend a reunion, this book slowly reveals the dark secrets that Ambrosia has been hiding for years.

I wasn't a massive fan of the way that this book ended however I did get a lot of enjoyment from the way that this book was written and the slow reveal. Around the 50% mark in this book was probably my favourite twist as it was masterfully done in such a way that I never would have expected it.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here - Laurie Elizabeth Flynn.

Mainly set on a US College campus, and Told using a past / present narrative, the past being while the girls were students, the present starts with the lead up to the highly anticipated ten year reunion.

The three main 'girls' are Ambrosia (Amb), Sully and Flora. Three very different characters. Flora is innocent and positive. Sully lives in a party whirlwind of booze, cocaine and casual sex. Amb justs wants to be wanted and not ignored.

While Flora and Sally's character traits are fairly obvious, almost like an angel and a devil whispering in Amb's ear, offering good and bad choices, Amb's character is deep and detailed with a high level of self awareness and consciousness.

Obviously something very bad happened in the past, and the story builds up gradually. I found it deep, dark and involving.

The plotting and the writing is clever and really rather descriptive and detailed, perhaps for me to the book's detriment, I was feeling that if it were a little faster it would have created more tension. The tension does ramp up throughout the book, and I found the ending satisfying.

There is a lot of character development between the past and present too, which is always good to see.

This is the first adult novel by this author after a number of successful YA novels as LE Flynn, I would definitely be interested in reading more.


Thanks to Netgalley and HQ

I thought this novel had an interesting premise but ultimately I didn't find it convincing. I think part of the problem is that the voice of the past sections doesn't do a good job at making us feel that Amb wasn't just a horrible person. Worse though, she's a boring horrible person just being horrible to 'fit in'. I kind of wish she'd been more awful for the sake of her own awfulness. She relished in her actions only because Sully gave her validation for them.

There were a few would be feminist lines that I thought were good but didn't fit the text - things like women can't show their ambition etc. I think the then sections needed to feel like they were in a different voice to work. As they are she seems to be exactly the same person and her declaration of remorse doesn't feel true.

Her friend telling her her husband is a 'great guy'. He doesn't really seem like one? He seems like a big of a child himself.

Not one for me in the end but thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

THAT ending!! Talk about thrilling - I couldn’t turn the pages quickly enough with this one!

This is a brilliant story of a toxic female friendship which ends in devastating consequences, with a dual timeline between their present college reunion, and ten years ago when the incident happened.

When Ambrosia (Amb) meets her college roommate Flora, she seems too good to be true - surely no girl is actually that nice?! Amb tries to put as much distance between her and this girl whose kindness makes her uncomfortable by falling in with Sloane (Sully) - a total rebel who doesn’t care what anyone thinks and loves to play games with people.

Only one of their games eventually goes too far, and ten years later someone is out for revenge...

This is such a compelling story - the dynamics of teenage girls and their friendships always fascinate me, and these are exceptionally dark and uncomfortable to read. The way Sully so clearly plays on Amb’s worst fears and insecurities means that they never feel like they’re on the same playing level - and yet there’s also a hint of possessiveness and jealousy in Sully’s behaviour towards Amb.

The girls together get into a lot of heavy stuff - drinking, drugs, casual sex - and none of it in a healthy way. The story also features sexual assault so please be aware.

There’s a certain inevitability to the tragic incident which is the turning point of the novel - I won’t give too much away, but you may already guess quite early on what is coming. Not that it makes it any less intriguing as we try to piece everything together!

For me, the real wow factor came from the ending - I was kind of left with my mouth hanging open in shock!

This was a brilliant and addictive psychological thriller with the kind of characters I love to hate - the definition of a page turner!

Flynn’s adult debut thriller is a turbo-charged variation on the mean-girls trope that opens with an invitation to a ten year college reunion that send shivers down the spine of thirty-one-year-old Ambrosia Wellington. Now working in PR in Manhattan and married to sociable Adrian, Ambrosia has worked hard to move on from her time at the prestigious university of Wesleyan and the acting career she once dreamt of. Adrian finding out about the events of a particular night dubbed ‘Dorm Doom’ is definitely not on Ambrosia’s agenda but when she starts receiving handwritten notes that explicitly refer to “what we did that night” she assumes they are from her manipulative former best friend, Sloane “Sully” Sullivan. Boxed into a corner and encouraged by Adrian to attend she reluctantly agrees, but reuniting with Sully reveals that she too has received the same notes and Amb feel sure that someone is out for revenge and determined to make the old friends pay... The book follows a ‘now’ and ‘then’ narrative hearing from Ambrosia (“Amb”) in the first-person and unfolding over the course of the weekend reunion.

Arriving at Wesleyan and desperate to fit in, Amb finds herself magnetically drawn to the larger-than-life character of Sully who seems almost sociopathic in her destructive behaviour and casual cruelty. Amb craves her approval and the duo do everything to excess - boys, alcohol, drugs and bullying - eventually culminating in a night dubbed ‘Dorm Doom’ that saw the pair wreak havoc in the life of a fellow student. Hearing directly from Amb allows the reader to see just what an insecure character she is as she starts her freshman year desperate to move on from her staid upbringing in New Jersey and keen to shake off her kind but ultimately dull “try-hard” roommate, Flora. Amb isn’t a likeable character and there is no clear evidence of remorse but she is a self-aware narrator and in the years following college has reinvented herself once again in her life with Adrian.

The first two-thirds of the book were a propulsive read as I raced through the back and forth with Amb scrambling to keep Adrian in the dark about the night in question, and I read on with increasing dread. In the final third I felt that the story was running out of steam with the events of ‘Dorm Doom’ rehashed multiple times and, given how callous Amb and Sully are from the off, there is very little in the way of shock value left and I felt inured to the constant sucking, snorting and back-stabbing. The detail on the girls exploits is quite graphic and more or less constant throughout the past narrative and whilst I found it a twisted and addictive read it was not a particularly pleasant one. I did feel the denouement and the reckoning that was on the cards from the first page was over-the-top and pretty ridiculous but the book was certainly an education in toxic female friendship!

A really gripping read! I just couldn’t put this one down - the past and present storylines ran perfectly alongside each other, ending on little tidbits of solving the mystery so I just wanted to keep reading on and on!

A darker take on mean girls / gossip girl / 90201. Just brilliant!

The Girls Are All So Nice Here is an unsettling, gripping thriller. The story is narrated by Ambrosia ‘Amb’ Wellington, a graduate of the prestigious Wesleyan university. Now a married PR professional living in Manhattan, she receives an invitation for her ten year reunion at Wesleyan. The invitation, written in calligraphy, comes with the note: ‘We need to talk about what we did that night.’

It’s clear that Amb keeps the dark events of ‘that night’ locked away. She hasn’t even discussed her time at Wesleyan with her husband and decides to avoid the reunion. However, after a chance meeting with a university acquaintance, she agrees to attend and this puts her back on track to reunite with her old best friend, Sully. Amb and Sully’s friendship was toxic and their behaviour had tragic consequences. Will the terrible events of the past come back to haunt Amb’s settled life in the present?

The story is told through an alternate timeline, with chapters flitting between Amb’s freshman year of college and the present day. The characters are well-developed and believable. Amb is a fascinatingly flawed protagonist. She has a weak sense of self, having always tried to fit in with other girls. She does ugly things, often influenced by others and always seeks attention from the wrong people. At times I found her quite unlikeable but I suppose this is the core message of the book: whatever the title says, the girls are not so nice here!

I found this book unsettling because it shines a light on the worst of female behaviour. The characters lie to one another, they are jealous, vengeful and intentionally nasty. However, I couldn't stop reading as I watched events unfold. The last few chapters are particularly tense and I enjoyed the twist at the end.

This novel is like a much darker version of Mean Girls – a story with a deadly conclusion. If you like stories with themes of toxic female friendships, betrayal and mental health then I would especially recommend this.

Thank you to HQ and Netgalley for the ARC.

The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a real thriller exploring the lengths some women will go to keep their best friend.

I’m not sure I’m the target audience for this novel. Though I did pretty much read the book in one sitting, unable to leave the page before I found out quite what dreadful event happened all those years ago at University, I found the exploration of obsessive female friendship somehow outdated. These young women were so firmly situated in their roles within the patriarchy that though they may have been invented to challenge it, to show how stereotyping women could have horrifying consequences when those very women used that stereotype for their own means, they instead felt unreconstructed, rigid caricatures. But again, perhaps I wasn’t quite the right reader.

The writing is certainly compelling and written with twists in just the right places to keep you guessing. It also beings with a reunion. That kind of hook is hard to ignore.

If you like a campus mystery with mean girls whose behaviour is more acerbic than most you can think of on our screens, then this darkly twisted tale will be right up your street.

This was very compelling, loved the college setting, the protagonist trying to escape from her past, and felt so sad for poor Flora. The bitchy girls felt very real. I found it a bit too gory at points and I did guess who was sending the emails to Ambrosia but otherwise a very compelling read!

This had me gripped from the start. It was truly disturbing because it had an element of truth. The story provides lots of food for thought. Under peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, how far can we sway from our moral compass?

The story flips between past and present with a protagonist that is clearly flawed and insecure. Ambrosia has found a sense of peace now but it is precarious. In her college years her need for belonging, acceptance and attention was more extreme, resulting in a horrendous chain of events. Now she faces her college reunion and she wonders if it'll be a chance for redemption or retribution.
The story unfolds at a good pace, as we gradually piece together the events that have impacted so many lives. The indulgence and freedom of discovery in the college years was well painted and I felt like I was part of the dorm. Best of all were the clear profiles of the key characters. Amb, Sully and Flora were intricately thought out and thoroughly believable. Lots of twists and turns make this a gripping thriller.

I love campus thrillers set at colleges/ universities (Bunny, The Furies, The Truants etc) and I’ll always give them a chance even though they’re usually a bit samey (and they all desperately want to be The Secret History!). The Girls Are All So Nice Here ended up being a decent example of the current trend for dark academia, although it’s definitely more Pretty Little Liars than Donna Tartt. The author is more known for YA fiction and I do think the writing would have been appropriate for a YA novel (albeit one with a lot of sex in it!). It’s relatively predictable but I thought the two timelines of the original events and the reunion worked better here than in other examples. Overall, if you like a fast-paced thriller about toxic female friendships, this is a decent choice.