This book is a problem. And I don't mean that entirely as a compliment.
I picked up Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls because I needed something that would keep my brain engaged during a stretch of quiet nights - you know, those 2 AM to 4 AM hours when the unit goes still and you're caught between charting and trying not to jinx the silence. A YA thriller about a girl investigating her best friend's apparent suicide? Dark enough. Short enough at 7 and a half hours. Should work.
And it did work. Mostly. But also drove me a little nuts.
The Friendship That Eats You Alive
Let me give Weingarten credit where it's due - she nails that specific intensity of teenage girl friendship. The kind where you're so enmeshed with another person that it's basically a romantic relationship without anyone calling it that. June and Delia's bond has that suffocating, codependent quality that I've seen play out in real life - not in the ER, but in my own teenage years, and in watching my younger sisters navigate their friendships. The "billion secrets" binding them together isn't just a cute metaphor. It's the whole engine of the book, and it runs hot.
The mystery itself keeps you guessing. Delia's death is ruled a suicide - burned in her stepfather's shed - and June refuses to believe it. That refusal to accept a tidy official explanation - and the psychological spiral that follows - reminded me of the kind of mind-rewiring work Annie Grace does in This Naked Mind, where the whole premise is that what you've been told to believe about something might be a carefully constructed lie. What follows is June pulling at threads that unravel into something way more twisted than a simple whodunit. The back half of this book? It goes places. I was genuinely surprised by at least two of the turns, and I'm someone who calls plot twists in medical dramas before the first commercial break.
But here's where I get complicated about it. The book is categorized under Kids & Family AND Mystery & Thriller, and that split personality shows. There are moments of genuine darkness - violence, manipulation, the kind of psychological games that feel adult and dangerous - and then there are stretches where the introspective narration goes so deep into June's head that I wanted to shake her and say "girl, MOVE." The pacing is uneven. The first half meanders through memories and emotional processing, and the second half sprints like someone just called a code blue. I would've liked a more even distribution of that urgency.
Rebekkah Ross and the Third-Person Problem
Okay. The narration. Rebekkah Ross does solid emotional work - she captures June's grief and paranoia in a way that feels real, not performative. When the tension ramps up in the final stretch, her delivery tightens and you can feel the walls closing in. That part is good.
But. BUT.
The perspective shifts nearly broke me. The book is primarily first person - June's voice, June's head. And then it slides into third person for the past-tense sections, the flashbacks to what June and Delia were. And in audio, without the visual cue of a chapter break or a different font, it's just... disorienting. I'd be deep in a scene and suddenly realize I'd lost track of whose eyes I was seeing through. I had to rewind at least three times during one shift. At 3 AM, when your brain is already running on caffeine and stubbornness, that's not ideal.
I've seen some listeners say the narration drove them crazy. I get it. I didn't hate it - Ross is genuinely skilled at emotional delivery - but the structural choice to shift perspectives without a clearer audio signal (a pause, a tone shift, SOMETHING) is a production decision that doesn't serve the listener well.
Who Should Burn Through This (and Who Should Walk Away)
If you're into dark YA with that Gone Girl-for-teens energy, and you don't mind getting a little lost in the timeline, this is a solid pick. The twists land hard enough to justify the uneven pacing. And at under 8 hours, it's not asking for a huge time commitment.
Skip it if: you need clean, linear storytelling in audio. If perspective shifts in narration make you want to throw your phone out the car window, this will test you. Also - content warning - the themes are heavy. Suicide, abuse, manipulation. This is not light listening.
For me? I'm somewhere in the middle. The story earned its NYT bestseller status with that last act. But the audio experience specifically has rough edges that a print reader wouldn't encounter. That matters when you're reviewing the audiobook, not just the book.
Night Shift Prescription
Carlos asked why I was rewinding the same chapter three times when I got home. I told him the book was gaslighting me. Which, honestly, is kind of the point. Weingarten wrote a story about not being able to trust what you think you know, and the slightly disorienting narration might actually serve that - accidentally or not. I'm giving it a grudging 3.5 stars for the story and knocking half a point for the audio execution. My mom would love this (she still thinks I should've been a doctor) - she's a sucker for a good mystery, and she reads in print, so the perspective problem wouldn't even touch her.
