Book Review: The Dead List by Jennifer L. Armentrout

As I said before, I had The Dead List on my wish list and I was waiting for it to come out in April when it changed status to be "Not Available".  I got notification from GoodReads that JLA was going to give the book to her fans by posting it on Watpad.  I immediately signed up for an account and followed her.  And I added The Dead List to my library.

The Dead List by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Book Description (From GoodReads):
The Dead List is a full standalone novel, coming in at roughly 93,000 words. It’s a Young Adult Romantic Suspense Yes. Lots of Romance. Sort of like Don’t Look Back, but a throwback to movies like Scream and the sort of campy fun ones. Think I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Scream. But with more romance.

My thoughts:
JLA decided to give this book to her fans and she serialized it on Watpad. I had previously posted the information. The book has now been posted in its entirety and I have to say, it was frustrating to have to wait for the next installment.

Ordinarily, I don’t really like suspense stories or thrillers, but I do like everything I have read by JLA. She is one of those authors I follow blindly and I have to say The Dead List did not disappoint.

The action in the story really starts when Ella is attacked leaving a party, but it was a situation where her life was in danger. She was attacked by someone wearing a clown mask and she almost died. Just the thought of that is horrific enough, but students in town wind up missing.

Ella is one of four best friends growing up. There was also Penn, Jensen and Gavin. Jensen was her first kiss and he broke her heart, Gavin was her ex-boyfriend and Penn committed suicide several years prior. Jensen moved away, but he was now back in town with his family.

Ella had broken up with Gavin months before because while she loved him, she wasn’t in love with him and she felt he was more serious about her than she was about him.

At the beginning of the story, one of the students has gone missing, Vee. She‘s been missing for two weeks. After the attack, Ella decides to take a self-defense course. Her guidance counselor gives her a contact and when she shows up for her first lesson, she finds that is Jensen, the boy who broke her heart. They used to be such good friends, but since he’s come back, he doesn’t speak to her. This isn’t going to be awkward at all.

I don’t want to go into any more detail than that. This is a thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat and I found that I was uncomfortable more than once. It was certainly a different way to read a book, having to wait for the next installment which was several days away. The characters are good, the story really had me at the edge of my seat and I can’t wait for the book to actually be published. This is an unedited version, so I found I had to edit a lot as I read.

Even so, it is really awesome of JLA to give this story to her fans! So if you don’t have a Watpad account, sign up, follow JLA, add The Dead List to your library and read it all the way through. See if you can figure out who done it!