Review--How to Survive Your Murder by Danielle Valentine

 

Alice Lawrence is the sole witness in her sister’s murder trial.

And in the year since Claire’s death, Alice’s life has completely fallen apart. Her parents have gotten divorced, she’s moved into an apartment that smells like bologna, and she is being forced to face her sister’s killer and a courtroom full of people who doubt what she saw in the corn maze a year prior.

Claire was an all-American girl, beautiful and bubbly, and a theater star. Alice was a nerd who dreamed of becoming a forensic pathologist and would rather stay at home to watch her favorite horror movies than party. Despite their differences, they were bonded by sisterhood and were each other’s best friends.

Until Claire was taken away from her.

On the first day of the murder trial, as Alice prepares to give her testimony, she is knocked out by a Sidney Prescott look-alike in the courthouse bathroom. When she wakes up, it is Halloween night a year earlier, the same day Claire was murdered. Alice has until midnight to save her sister and find the real killer before he claims another victim.

 

Danielle Valentine has done it again! She has written yet another bone-chilling thriller that leaves me breathless! How to Survive Your Murder was so incredibly amazing I am at a loss for words here! It was horrific and bloody and a raging good time! I am not a horror movie fan at all, but I do find I can enjoy a good twisty thriller/horror novel and Danielle of many names is one of my favorites!

Alice is your classic horror movie buff! She's an introvert who loves watching all the gory slasher films and discussing them with her best friends. They always talk about how they would survive in a slasher movie and what things not to do, how to become that Final Girl...the one who lives! So on Halloween night, she's all set to stay in and watch some movies, but her friends convince her to come to a party in a cornfield, because it'll be fun! Her older sister, Claire also nags at her to come and Alice reluctantly agrees. 

When she decides to skip the corn maze part, leaving her sister to go it alone, it's a decision she comes to regret for days to come. For when Alice went her own way, Claire ended up getting killed by a boy who worked for their father at their family-owned gym. 

Fast forward a year, life has changed drastically. Alice's parents divorced, her father drinks, and she and her mom live in cramped apartment trying to get by. But then Alice meets a girl whom she silently dubs Sidney Prescott, who magically transports her back in time to that fateful night. Alice has until the stroke of midnight to save her sister, and not to die herself.

All goes according to plan...except more girls start getting murdered instead and Alice will have to figure out just who the murderer really is, as the one they always thought was the killer, may be innocent after all.

This was one twisted and chilling read! Things suspended from reality a little bit with the time traveling part, but honestly it gets explained in a simple and believable manner. Then it just becomes more of your classic thriller with the heroine running from a murderer and trying to save her friends (and sister!). Along the way though, we learn a bit about what was going on behind the scenes. Things that didn't get explored the first go-around since Alice was elsewhere.

I have to say, trying to solve the whodunit was challenging! I changed my mind so many times! Lol! I think I started to suspect the culprit towards the end, kind of just before it was revealed! And oh wow, was that a trip! If that wasn't shocking enough, the ending is one that really through me! I think I might have actually shouted as I read those last few lines! Lol!

While I would've liked a little more detail and answers to the supernatural element that was involved, those things will have to remain the true mystery. I guess the easiest answer is accepting what it was at face value. It was trippy for sure but I positively loved it!

If you're looking for a creeptastic thriller then How to Survive Your Murder is the read for you! Some mysteries should probably remain mysteries and this is a book that will prove that fact!

Overall Rating 5/5 stars