Well. What can I say? It isn’t often that a book so completely grips me that I just want to hide away with it until I have finished it, yet at the same time never want it to end. This was such a fantastic read of twists and turns, it had me completely hooked.

I enjoyed this book, the plot was excellent and the characters were very relatable. Highly recommend this read.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Elizabeth Klehfoth for the copy of this book. I agreed to give my unbiased opinion voluntarily.

Did someone say a decade old mystery? Well, if they were talking about All These Beautiful Strangers, then they sure did! But there’s a lot more going on here than just a girl trying to find out what happened to her mum ten years ago.

In fact, in the beginning she doesn’t actually give a toss about that, considering everyone in the Calloway family is under the impression that Charlie’s mum just simply took off one night. Charlie is of course pissed off about being abandoned. Who wouldn’t be?

She doesn’t have too much time to worry about this though, because she receives an invite to join Knollwood Prep’s secret society, the A’s. The A’s are The Shit in this posh high school, and every wannabe cool kid dreams about being a member. In my opinion they are just a bunch of assholes, who create chaos and destruction for basically no reason. They are not promoting anything, they are not doing it to create awareness, they are just a group of entitled teenagers who think they should be allowed to do anything they fancy just because they can. Why Charlie wants to join? Well, because they are cool… no? No idea. During the initiation process they recruits get humiliated, perform illegal heists, and have to swear secrecy, or else their dirty secrets will be exposed. They also get expelled if caught. Sounds lovely.

On top of this Charlie’s uncle is back, and he insists that her mum, Grace didn’t just disappear and he has evidence. After meeting her mum’s side of the family, Charlie takes it up on herself to dig into the mystery with the help of Greyson, the son of Grace’s best friend. Greyson is sort of hot, brooding and has the tendency to sneak into Charlie’s dorm unannounced, which really is kind of a problem, since Grace is also hooking up with one of the member of the A’s. It’s not quite a love triangle though, so all is well.

So as she starts unraveling the mystery, her suspicion grows. There’s probably more to her mum’s disappearance than meets the eye. When she and Greyson stumble upon yet another deadly secret related to Grace, they go into full detective mode.

This is certainly a fast paced and quite entertaining mystery, but I didn’t particularly like Charlie. Her reflections on most of the scenarios were rather odd. The timeline shifted between the present and the past, and I much more enjoyed the chapters told by Grace from the past. There were some twists and turns that were just damn delicious, but I’m always kind of skeptical when it comes to amateur investigators. I was pretty satisfied with the ending, but I’m not sure how the real detectives actually pulled the whole thing off after our self appointed detectives messed around with all the evidence.

I do love the author’s writing style, so I think I’ll be looking out for her next book.

I've started to read quite a few first-person YA novels recently, and this was the first one in a long time that I actually finished! I enjoyed all the narrative voices chosen to tell the story and found the change in narrator and flashbacks worked really well when creating tension. It made me super excited to carry on reading to find out the answers to the many questions posed throughout the book. As well as the storylines, I liked the main character (Charlie) despite her flaws, and I felt her character arc was done beautifully. The other characters were created just as intricately as the main character, which really helped in bringing the story to light. A standout YA novel!

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Wow!
This book actually turned out to be pretty good!
It took me a while to plough through it as it's very slow paced, but I think it needed to be slow to add to the thriller.
I really enjoyed the sections on Alistair and Grace on their past.
I liked how Charlie their daughter has her own section too.
This book was definitely eery.
Not only do we have a secret society getting their members to do crazy tasks, we have a disappearance of Grace's mum.
The book is designed beautifully, and this story just goes to show that messages can get mixed up in the middle of the truth.
The ending actually choked me a little, in a bitter sweet way.
I really enjoyed this and definitely recommend.

All These Beautiful Strangers was a lot more thrilling than I was expecting! For a YA thriller, it reads fairly mature, and I would say that there's a good amount of crossover for the target audience. The story alternates between the present day (told from the teenage Charlie's point of view) and the past (told from her parents' points of view). This was a really good move from the author, because it gave us a lot of backstory which added to the mystery, rather than having Charlie discover everything and tell us about it herself.

I did find the stuff that was happening in the past to be more interesting than the present day storyline. I think this is because it was leading up to the disappearance of Charlie's mother, and there was a lot to discover there. The bits set in the present day with the romances and the secret society weren't nearly as interesting. To begin with, it felt quite disjointed, but as the story progressed the two plots became more interwoven and it all started to make sense.

I did think that the main character was arrogant, and I didn't particularly care for any of her relationships either. However, there was some character progression, especially with how everything was revealed towards the end, so I can somewhat forgive her arrogance in the beginning.

As for the twist, well, I barely saw it coming. Everything did start to make sense and it all sort of clicked, but even then I was still questionning whether I was right or not. It was a really well done mystery, in my opinion. Klehfoth definitely knows how to deliver a thriller!

I received a free ecopy of this book in return for an honest review. Many thanks to @netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

I have to say I loved All These Beautiful Strangers. Maybe I shouldn’t have connected with Charlie – she’s rich, I’m not, she’s American, I’m English, she’s a schoolgirl, I’m definitely not. Somehow, though, I found myself caught up in her damaged, my-parents-are-crazy, bewildered-by-the-world, life. By page 3 I was hooked and there was no getting out until the story was done.

Essentially, ATBS is a mystery, but it starts with Charlie Calloway at a posh New England prep school, getting involved in a game of dare, to get entry into the most exclusive club, the As. We learn that failure has far greater penalties than just being an outsider. At this point I thought the book was going to be a rerun of Nerve. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We then switch to the story of Charlie’s mum, Grace, who disappeared ten years earlier. We follow Grace through the days and hours leading up to disappearance, and later follow both Grace and Charlie’s dad, Alistair, through their first meetings and marriage.

It is the mystery of Grace’s disappearance that keeps us reading. We want to know what happened to her, but Charlie’s school, previously attended by Alistair, keeps popping back up into events both past and present.

By the end of the book Charlie has made several emotional realisations about her parents and about the world in general and you feel that she will be a better person for it.

There are some elements in the story that remind me of Gatsby, in the manner of rich people versus poor people versus poor people trying to look like rich people.

I’m not usually a fan of multiple points of view as I have a tendency to get characters mixed up but I had no trouble with this one. I sailed through it in the minimum time, and I could see myself giving it a reread in the future.

If you like a good mystery this one is definitely worth a read.

I couldn't put this book down. A perfectly written mystery, set over several years. Charlotte Calloway comes from a privileged family, and attends a prestigious boarding school., as did her father and uncle before her. At the start of the novel we discover that 10 years earlier, Charlotte's mother disappeared without trace. The novel then darts between the now (2017), the year her mother disappeared (2007), and the preceding years, when Charlotte's father met her mother. I loved the way the story darts between the different eras, depositing clues in the story lines of the past, which resurface in the present day story. All in all a very enjoyable read!

I really enjoyed All These Beautiful Strangers! I was immediately hooked by the prologue, and looked forward to finding out what the mystery was. And the story was thrilling enough.Charlie Calloway is a junior at Knollwood Prep and she is the daughter of real -estate mogul, Alistair Calloway. 10 years ago her mother disappeared leaving her, her sister and father. But the story is DID SHE REALLY DISAPPEAR ?? As Charlie comes across some series of Photographs of her mother , she begins to questions everything she has been told about her mother.

“No one can really understand the whole of a person. In many ways, the people I was closest to, the people who meant the most to me-were strangers. Beautiful strangers.”

Really enjoyed this book, was apprehensive when I first started reading it as thought it was going to be some high school, preppy rubbish but it is so not that!! Emotional, questioning and twisting it is worth every moment!

This was easy to read; it reminded me of S.T.A.G.S which I also enjoyed. I couldn't put this book down, it was easy to get sucked into the society and the shady deeds that ensue. Some parts left me feeling a bit uncomfortable which added to the tension throughout the book. I liked that the book had a bit of everything- teen drama, a mystery, psychological warfare... A perfect summer read that will have you hooked.

First off this book is absolutely stunning just to look at: raised water bubbles on the cover, sprayed edges and a lovely cover design mean I would probably buy it on impulse before even knowing what it was about...
But did the insides match the beautiful exterior? YES! I absolutely loved this. YA thrillers like this are my absolute favourite books and this gripped me right until the very end. At just over 500 pages its hefty for a YA book but it didn't lose my attention once.
It flashes back and forth between Charlie Calloway in the present and her parents Grace and Alistair in the past and they are both linked together by a mysterious secret society on campus known as The A's. It wraps up with a satisfying conclusion but to be honest I would have been more than happy for this to continue as a series. I am very excited for the author's future work.

I was sent an uncorrected advance proof of All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth to read and review by NetGalley.
The story is set in a prestigious college and links the lives of the current students and the alumni through the exclusive ‘secret’ club called the A’s. The A’s devise difficult and incriminating tasks for the initiates to prove themselves worthy of being accepted into the club. Selection is by invitation only.
Once embroiled with the A’s the main protagonist, Charlie, embarks on a quest to find out the truth surrounding her mother’s disappearance, how it may be linked to the club and her father’s possible involvement, having once been a member himself. The novel is nicely written with a lot of background information and uses the popular chapter per character style, hopping between the present day and the past.
I think the book is rightly placed in the Teen/Young Adult category as I feel the style and subject matter would appeal more to a younger audience – hence the 4 stars.

This felt like a very interesting YA/adult novel hybrid, with it's focus on both Charlie Calloway (in 2017) and her parents (in the 1990s). With Charlie's mother's disappearance, and the mysterious death of a boy on campus, there are more than a few secrets hidden by the Calloways, and as the book slowly unfolds, you get all the answers. The three POVs and different time periods means there's often dramatic irony in the relaying of information, so mostly I was waiting for Charlie to catch up on things I'd already read being admitted.

There was a lot of elements to this book that I enjoyed, like the secret society at the boarding school (very Frankie Landau-Banks) and Charlie joining the school paper, but I think I would have liked it more if the story was more heavily weighted on Charlie being a detective, rather than just given information by uncles and friends of the family.

Secondary characters swarmed this book, and I cared quite a lot for Drew and Grayson, but the focus on the parent storylines meant their prominence was weak. I did like that I couldn't put my finger on the romantic lead of the story though...everyone was either too non-committal or too detestable!

All These Beautiful Strangers definitely read like it was written by a creative writing professor (which is accurate according to Klehfoth's bio) and that tone made it an interesting and stand-out read from other things on my shelf.

Basically, if you wished that Gossip Girl was about the parent's generation, and that Pretty Little Liars had more 'getting to the point', then I'd really recommend this book!

This was the perfect mix of lies, mysteries and privileged kids that you just love to hate. I don't know what the draw is of rich kids with very few morals, but I can't get enough of reading about the dark side of prep schools and the elite. Combining that backstabbing, selfish society with a tantalising mystery that changes everything in Charlie's life.

Charlie was a great character. The way she developed over the course of the book, finding more and more about what happened to her mother. It was the perfect story of a rich, privileged, self-absorbed girl waking up to the world around her and realising that perhaps her comfortable world isn't as harmless as it seems.

I loved how Charlie's life at school, trying to get into the As and getting together with the boy she likes seems so unconnected to the mystery she's trying get to the bottom of it, but how it all intertwines in the deeply satisfying conclusion.

If you like elite societies filled with dark secrets, this is definitely one for the must read list.

An interesting mystery that blends past and present perfectly. The characters are, whilst not particularly likeable, well developed and relatable.
I would recommend to fans of young adult and mystery novels

No one knows what happened to Grace Calloway. All These Beautiful Strangers follows Charlie's search for the truth about what happened her mother ten years after she went missing. However, Charlie learns that some doors should never be open.

PROS

Boarding School. Who doesn't love a story set in a boarding school? I don't know how to explain (there really isn't a reason why), but I quite enjoy when authors choose a boarding school as the setting. The halls are always full of secrets to be unveiled and past ghosts that still haunt the present.

The A's. Another concept that always grabs my attention is an anonymous club. Of course these avengers turned corrupted down the line, but I still enjoy the concept.
[Pin on Pinterest]
To go back in time. The author jumps from past to present in order to reveal Charley' family history (who were her parents, how did they meet, who are the cold hearted Calloways) and the secrets around her mother's disappearance. Moreover, there are other perspectives and that made the plot so much more interesting - talking about the plot, it was very twisty.

CONS

Charlie. She really isn't a likeable character. She's a rich spoiled brat. She's pretentious and arrogant. She's mean to her "friends" - she really doesn't respect them or their backgrounds (she's always picking on one of her friends that has a scholarship for trying too hard). There were a few times that she acted as if she were superior to everyone else. All of Charlie's vices are acknowledged by the author, but I still felt like slapping her a couple of times.

All these beautiful strangers was a really entertaining book! It is a mystery that I feel like will be perfect to read while laying on the beach. Once you start, you almost can't stop. However, I felt like it was a little messy and slow sometimes, so you really have to take the time to read this book.

If past experience has taught me anything, it is to be wary whenever a book is pitched to me as the next The Secret History. For anyone not in the know, The Secret History by Donna Tartt is an elaborate whydunnit about aristocratic kids at an expensive arts college. It’s gorgeous in its detail, and so far it has proved [at least with me] to be a one of a kind book. Of all the books that have called themselves the next The Secret History [or have been likened to it by publishers, reviewers or friends] none of them have really come close.

All These Beautiful Strangers carries the same recommendation: ‘for fans of The Secret History.‘ However, unlike the others, it actually somewhat lives up to the hype. The whole thing takes place in an exclusive boarding school, where the mysterious A society has tapped Charlie on the shoulder. She’s determined to be a member, surviving the difficult tasks she has to complete in order to make the cut. As awful as some of these challenges were, I thought they made the whole thing very interesting and gave the characters a lot of drive. Books which do similar things often fall short for me because the tasks seem too easy for such an exclusive and mysterious club– more like a game of truth and dare at a high school party than anything else. These ones were HUGE risks and were so bad, I can’t imagine many people being able or willing to do them.

The other thing that I really enjoyed about ATBS was how many twists and turns there were in the plot. Some of them were easy to figure out, but then there were some others that just floored me and left me dying to know more. I definitely got the one more chapter syndrome from this book. I just wanted to find out everything about the world and the characters and the society and everything else in between.

Of course, there were some flaws. The book wasn’t perfect. If anything, I think some of the characters could have been fleshed out better– especially if people are going to go make comparisons to The Secret History. That book worked because, even though we weren’t meant to like the characters, we knew enough about them as people to be mesmerised by them all the same. ATBS attempts a similar concept, I think, to show us exactly how awful some rich and snobby people can be, and how power-hungry they are, but it just came off a little short of the mark for me. Charlie and her best friend definitely could have done with just a little more substance to them.

All in all, All These Beautiful Strangers earned a 9/10 from me. It was a very plot driven novel, with so many hairpin bends that it left me dizzy. Fans of E. Lockhart should definitely put this book on their radar, it’s a must read for those who devoured We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud.

The Calloway family; famous, rich and with hidden secrets. Through different family voices, we are told about the meeting of Alistair Calloway and his wife Grace, her disappearance in 2007 and how their daughter Charlie has become embroiled with the elite 'A's' at school.
There is a lot of information to process during this novel as new people and events are fed to the reader. Clever hints and leading situations kept me reading but I'm afraid that the characters did not appeal. Their lifestyle was one plenty and of never saying sorry.