the cheerleaders // kara thomas

published: 2018

pages: 370

heard/read: 6/18-19/2019

book: 41 in 2019

SYNOPSIS

There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook.

First there was the car accident--two girls dead after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Those two girls were killed by the man next door. The police shot him, so no one will ever know his reasons. Monica's sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they'd lost.

That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it's not that easy. She just wants to forget.

Only, Monica's world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her step dad's desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school. . . . Whatever happened five years ago isn't over. Some people in town know more than they're saying. And somehow, Monica is at the center of it all.

MY THOUGHTS 
SHORT VERSION
the premise is intriguing. the delivery...mmmm...not so much but i do think it had a lot of potential. 

LONG VERSION

so. 

that synopsis, to me, is a bit off. 

i mean, yes. all 5 are dead BUT well, they're not really all "connected". 

first off, there is the car accident. 

then there's the murders and because i doubt anyone is going to read this so it doesn't matter if i "spoil" it, there's a suicide. (maybe someone will read it and im just being a dick but that's how i feel about it.) 

only the murders and suicide are "connected". the car accident was more so connected to the suicide because home girl couldn't handle it and i think she was supposed to be with them or idk, i don't remember. but i think she felt guilty about it. but she was supposed to be with the girls who got murdered but she ended up sick so avoided it per se. 

i feel like this story had A LOT of potential. i mean, 5 DEAD CHEERLEADERS!!!!!

how do you fulfill that premise and make it work!? ultimately, i feel like the overall-ness of this story didn't deliver. 

This house was made for someone without a soul. 

So i guess it makes sense that my mother wanted it so badly. 

that's a little bit of a harsh start. that got me hooked in the beginning and i was thinking that the mother was a bad person in a way but now that i am done with the book i realize that maybe Monica meant it as like a metaphor of some sort or just that Monica is dramatic as fuck. lets go with the latter. 

Monica is Jen's sister. 

Jen is one of the 5. 

Jen is the only one who survived both accidents and then took her life because she couldn't cope with the guilt. but i do think it had to do with way more than that. at least that's what i got from it. she was depressed for a while but all of this just pushed it over the edge. 

Bethany & Colleen were in a car accident and Susan & Juliana were murdered in Susan's home. 

to get the point, B & C's accident was completely, simply, just that; an accident. (i mean caused by someone else but still an accident.) (which now that its been a while, what a dick move to know who caused it and NEVER open your mouth about it just because your feelings are more important than others.) 

J & S on the other hand, well, that was definitely murder. the only two that fit the synopsis. 

to be honest, i don't even remember what started Monica's whole shindig with this. 

i just remember that home girl got a job at a golf course or something and she had just gone through a break up so she hooks up with some dude Brandon who, tbh, total pedophile. 

he's almost 10 years older than her and she is 15? 16? 

either age, she was nowhere near 18 so, ya know. 

anyway, something lights a fire under Monica's ass and she starts hounding everyone she can to get information. (she finds her sister's old cellphone in her stepfather's desk as well as a set of letters that state that he (her stepfather) needs to uncover the truth or some shit because that person knows they got the wrong dude) she takes her phone, sees that the day of, or before, i don't remember, she had made a call to an unsaved number and then she starts a conversation with that person. 

its weird to me that Monica would super 1000% confide in people she doesn't know and not people she does know. but then again if she had, would they have believed her anyway? would we have gotten the murder? 

so yea, she goes through all this shit to uncover the truth. 

and of course she has her circle of friends but she decides to confide in Ginny. 

so they both go on missions to uncover the truth. 

.

.

.

and they do. 

for the most part. 

here's the thing. 

this book would have been pretty cool had it been i don't know, shorter? 

i get that ultimately it all needed to be in there to complete the story or whatever but I'm pretty sure that it could have been tied up sooner, faster, neater? 

it was just, i heard this as an audio book/also read along and even then half of the time i wasn't intrigued or super into it.  

its 9 hrs long and with 2.5 hrs left, i was ready to just ditch it. 

i looked for spoilers and i found out who did it right away but still kept going at it cause at the moment that i found out who'd dun it (very early on in the book) i was still very interested in the how. but once it got into the whole searching for the killer aspect of it, it just dragged. 

and so that just dragged for me. 

and the end!!!!

that last chapter!!!!

i have no feelings for Ginny. she is who she is and that's it. 

she didn't steer anything in me but now knowing what i know, I'm more....!!!!!, that Monica didn't question anything. well, she does, but Ginny is very convincing. 

Ginny is a conniving little thing. 

she had answers to questions Monica hadn't even thought of asking yet. 

and all in all, considering Ginny has a first row view to all that Monica was thinking / going through, i think she's 100% a bitch for knowing what she knows and not speaking about it. all because she is too, i don't know, embarrassed or whatever. 

i know that 5 years ago she was a kid (....but not really, she would have been 12 since the 5 year anniversary is coming up and she had turned 17 just a few days prior and you know...) and she was acting on fear or revenge or whatever but i feel that now at 17, she cant because of her logic but also because she has to know that if she opens her mouth, they'll drag her for it. at least, i think. i think if she would have had physiological help, it would have been a different thing. 
it just sucks that those girls parents want to know why but they never will because Ginny would rather not talk. 

i'd be afraid of her, tbh. 

(ya know what, FUCK GINNY.)

either way: 

-a lot is happening

-way too many people involved

-too many questions arise that are left unanswered. 

-too long. it involves TOO much for what (i feel) little it gave you in the end. 

....and apparently, its based on a true story. sorta-ish. 
YIKES!

this post is just as long as the book itself. either way, spoilers after the jump.

thanks for reading!

#lesreads on IG
SPOILERS

spoilers straight up because i just don't have the energy. and i couldn't even if i tried.

Brandon killed Juliana & Susan.

J & S were having a sleepover at Susan's. 
prior to this, Brandon & Jules had gotten in a fight because Jules wanted Brandon to break up with his gf. and she thought he was especially after the gf found an earring in his car. (he blamed it on home girl that starts with the letter C. lets call her Carly because i cant remember her name.)
i guess Juliana got all riled up and told him that if he didn't stand up for her, she'd tell everyone about them. 
which bodes bad for him because Jules is only 15 and Brandon was idk.....past 21 for sure. 

so anyway, he shows up to the house and they argue. 
they get in a fight, he pushes her, she fucks her head up on a mirror, grabs a shard of broken mirror, tries to cut him, he ends up strangling her. 
Susan comes down the stairs and sees all this, Brandon catches her and kills her by strangling her. 

Monica's step dad arrived at the scene the next day and he kills Susan's neighbor because they thought he had done it. (mon's step dad is a cop) 
previous to all of this, they  had caught him with pictures of Susan in a bikini by her pool. so it was just safe to assume he did it. and it was considered self defense because he supposedly had a gun pointed at Tom. which we learn later on, he did not. 

Ginny's dad killed Bethany & Colleen in the car. 

Ginny's dad was a piece of shit. 
he beat the fuck out of her mom and finally she had enough. 
mom had to go to work so she left Ginny with her dad's mom. 
dad shows up and yells at his mom to let him have Ginny and finally she relents and lets him take her. 

he's drunk as fuck, they go to 711 he gets beer and on the way out he yells at 2 other older kids about leaving them girls alone (see the connection here?) (even though he was a fuck up, he knew that them older dudes were hooking up with underage girls).
Ginny is afraid they're going to kick his ass so she begs him to get in the car. 
he gets in, drives off all while it starts raining harder. 
he's swerving all over the place telling her that she needs to trust him because he'd never hurt his family. as he's talking, he asks her what she wants to listen to but she doesn't answer and he swerves into Beth & Colleen. 
kills them INSTANTLY. 
Ginny and her dad end up in an embankment. she managed to get out. 
her dad was pretty fucked up and needed her help to get out of his seat belt but she left him alone and watched the truck flow into the river and float away. 

she walked all the way home, told her mother her father fucked her up and vowed to never tell anyone cause, why? 


Jen committed suicide cause she couldn't handle it anymore. 

other notes: 
-Monica has an abortion. the baby daddy is Brandon. so even though he had gotten away clean free the first time, he was like fuck it lets do it again. 

-Ethan was the one that Monica was texting. 
he was bullied by all the other kids. mostly Jens friends and she never did anything. 
-he got expelled because they found a list with all the cheerleader names on it. sorta like a hit list. Jen's was the only name NOT on the list. he got caught because Susan told the principle when she saw Jen slip a note in his locker. the note? in class Jen wrote a note saying that she was not okay. Ethan picked it up and asked her if she wanted to talk about it.  she was replying to that and that's what Susan had seen. 

-Ethan and Jen go way back. he was her first kiss but she freaked out and left him alone and distances herself from him simply because he kissed her. 

-home girl that starts with the letter C: 
-she joined cheer and became friends with Juliana. Jen was worried that C was turning Jules into, i duno, a wreck? when in reality C was just, i guess doing drugs. Jules was the one hooking up with Brandon.  so i guess that would be her only fault, introducing them but yea. 


uhhh...im sure there's a lot i left out but this is basically all it for the most part.