Blurb and book cover image from Goodreads.
Something bad happened last night.
I’ve woken up with the hangover from hell, a stranger in my bed, and I’ve gone viral for the worst reasons.
But I can’t remember a thing…
My best friend Posey is dead. The police think it was a tragic accident. I know she was murdered.
There’s only thing stopping me from dying of shame. I need to find a killer.
Thanks to Netgalley and HQ for this book. What a great way to start 2024. This book is dark but not without humour and it is so superbly paced. I couldn’t put it down. We wake up with Molly, who’s the worse for the wear after her work Christmas party and her life continues to spiral out of control.
Molly is a rare heroine in that she’s really quite flawed but intensely easy to root for. She says inadvisable things, she drinks too much and she’s perhaps not entirely happy in her job as a journalist for a girls’ magazine. Her best friend is dead, and there is a mystery involving a missing teenager, and that’s on top of the reason Molly is trending on social media. The plot unravels in such a satisfying way and it is an easy read; it’s the sort of novel so well written that just it flowed into my brain with minimal effort on my part which is honestly how I like to spend my New Year’s Day. As Molly uncovers a very dark truth, we learn more about her and, eventually, we even learn why her relationship with her father is strained (now that was a twist).
This is an incredibly modern mystery; social media is lurking around the edges of the entire story in a quietly intrusive way and we certainly have cause to doubt Molly’s reasoning, and whether we really should trust Jack, the handsome stranger who woke up in her bed the morning after the night before…
Now that I’ve read this book, I am absolutely going to read Katy Brent’s first book, intriguingly titled How to Kill Men and Get Away With It) which, by description, sounds like it will be every bit as clever and dark as The Murder After The Night Before.
I very much recommend this book, especially if you like slightly dark murder mysteries with real character.
Rating: 4 stars
TL;DR: Molly Monroe wakes up with a stranger in her bed, and she is going viral on social media for the worst reason. Her day will get magnitudes worse when she discovers the body of her best friend, and finds herself immersed in another mystery.
Content warning for sexual assault, domestic violence.
whelmed.blog 