This book just wasn't for me. I struggled to get into it and almost didn't finish it.
We just didn't really gel. I couldn't get into the characters although the idea of the story is fascinating. Thank you

I really enjoyed the moral dilemma and big questions at the heart of this story and felt like the book was well written and executed well.

This story follows the trial of Emily Keller who has been accused of manslaughter, after a family died. The story was slow going at times as it went back and forth, from past to present explaining the lead up to the trial. I was really interested in how the story would emerge and how Emily’s trial would plan out. There was a few twists and turns, some I had a feeling would happen but there were bits that’s I wasn’t expecting.

Great for young adult and adult readers, this is a crime fiction/mystery novel surrounding a girl, Emily, going on trial for the deaths of a family of four, including two young kids. The story flip flops between the present day of the trial, as well as all of the days leading up to that fateful night. The earlier storyline also begins with her rough upbringing and eventually, making a new friend and bad influence, Hannah, as well as how she’s introduced to the ultimate victims, the Thomas family. As it progresses, it brings the question: did she do it and if not, who is the real culprit?
I guessed what happened pretty early on, but enjoyed the lead-up that could easily keep others guessing.
Thank you to CamCat Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is out now.

Wow. This book follows Emily in both the present and the past. Emily is currently on trial for the murder of 4 people. However, underneath all this is a girl just trying to find her way in life who made choices that are affecting her now. This was a quick-paced book that easily gets you intrigued.

An amazing read, so many twists and turns.

I really am that reader that has to be obsessed from
The first few pages in & this book definitely did this for me.

Highly recommended.

Girl on Trial was phenomenal. I could not put it down until I knew what happened. I enjoyed the writing style with the dual timelines, exploring both Emily’s relationship with Hannah and her trial for manslaughter. I will definitely look forward to more from Kathleen Fine.

maybe it didn't appeal to me as much as it did to others but somehow I wasn't really invested in it like i'm not saying the plot wasn't good. it was actually excellent and managed to keep me at the edge of my seat for most of the time but still it was lacking the gut wrenching feeling that I was hoping for when I requested it. the attention was to details was impeccable so were the characters. they felt real because they were flawed and nuanced. but books like these could use a little bit ambiguity and this didn't have any. regardless, it was good enough for a debut thriller I guess.

This book was great! You are constantly on your toes! Once you think you’ve figured something out there’s a twist that you never saw coming! A great thriller that flowed well it never felt like the author was overcompensating for anything. Cant recommend this book enough!

Holy crap I didn’t expect this to be so good! Fast paced and thrilling, I didn’t see the twists and turns coming! Definitely going to look at more by this author.

Emily Keller is trying, like any 16-year-old girl, to navigate high school and find herself. She wants to get in with a more popular crowd, so she makes some questionable decisions that landed her in more trouble than she could ever could have imagined.

This story takes you back and forth in time. Travel through the past as Emily makes the choices that will ultimately put her on trial for 4 counts of manslaughter, and sit with her in the courtroom in the present as she fights to clear her name.

This book gives me very much the movie Thirteen vibes. It was a quick, interesting read! Thank you Cam Cat Books and NetGalley for the ACR in exchange for my honest review!

Please see my full review on good reads! I reviewed it there first and now it won’t let me put that review here. I have also included the link to my full review. Great read!

This book was so intriguing! I do not think there was ever a part of this book that I was generally bored. There was always something going on, which made it really hold my attention!

I LOVED the mystery in this book! Though I knew what was going to happen from the very beginning, it was still cool to see exactly what happened. All of the court room scenes were so interesting, and I loved the dual timeline. It was so perfect for a story like this.

The only reason I gave this one three stars is because of some personal reasons and because it was extremely disturbing at parts. I knew the trigger warnings going into this book, but I was not expecting them to be as graphic as they were. They made me feel very sick, and I had to skip over these scenes. I do not think this book would be good for anyone under the age of sixteen to read -- considering how graphic and traumatizing scenes were. At times, I could not believe this was a YA book.

I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a dark mystery with a lot of drama. It would be perfect to read on a lazy, rainy day!

Thank you to netgalley and CamCat Books for the arc of this one! It just came out on October 24th!

The topic was interesting, but I was not captivated by the structure or the characters. I think that the tension was absent on the page. I could not finish the book -- there were factual errors in the portrayal of addicts that bothered me and the tone was cavalier. As a result, I'm giving this three stars, as perhaps it improved.

I read this book in 2 days because I had a hard time putting it down. It is told from Emily’s POV in 2 timelines. One is the trial, and one is the past. I really felt for Emily, a teenager on trial for causing the death of an entire family. The book gets started right away on the first day of Emily’s trial so we don’t know much about what happened leading up to the trial. I was drawn in by Emily as her insecurities drove a lot of her actions in my opinion. This is a great read and you will love it if you like family dramas.

Girl on Trial by Kathleen Fine is a phenomenal story about sixteen year old Emily as she struggles through a brutal prosecution of her character as she is on trial for the unintentional murder of a family of four. The novel is split mainly into two parts, the past leading up to the trial, and the trial itself.

Kathleen Fine does an incredible job at encompassing the overwhelming fear, guilt and heartache that Emily feels throughout the story, and at showcasing the tremendous effects that peer pressure and the ultimate desire to be accepted can do to a person.

The family dynamic between Emily, her brother Nate and their mother is a complicated and heart felt showcase on what alcoholism can bring to a family unit, and how it effects the children who deal with it in different ways. Emily is left with a deep and desperate need to be popular and seen as normal, making her incredibly vulnerable to peer pressure and manipulation.

There are a lot of heavy topics in this novel that I believe Kathleen Fine deals with delicately and with brutal honestly. Although tough to read at times, due to the subject matters discussed, they were written with care and consideration.

My only criticism is that some chapters included sentences that were clunky bringing me out of the story at times. Furthermore, the fast paced nature of the novel would sometimes feel disjointed and difficult to keep up with.

Overall, I rate this novel 4 stars as it was a page turner through and through, especially in the third act. It is incredible examination of what a trial like this could do to a young person, especially one so traumatised, and I would definitely recommend this book to a friend.

Girl on Trial
by Kathleen Fine
Pub Date 24 Oct 2023
BooksGoSocial,CamCat Books
Mystery & Thrillers| New Adult| Teens & YA

BooksGoSocial and Netgalley provided me with a copy of Girl On Trial:


Are you bad because of one bad thing you did?


Sixteen-year-old Emily Keller, known by the media as Keller the Killer, is accused of killing a family of four, including children. Emily is the youngest female accused of a crime so heinous, making this the biggest trial of the year. What really happened that fateful night-and who's to blame-is anything but straightforward.


Emily lives in a trailer park with her twin brother and alcoholic mother in Baltimore. In a desperate attempt to fit in with her peers, she has made questionable decisions. Will her mistakes land her in prison for life? It's up to the jury.


I give Girl On Trial three out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Girl on Trial follows sixteen year old Emily through two primary timelines: the events leading up to the fateful Fall night where a family died, seemingly at Emily's hand, and the subsequent trial where Emily has been charged with manslaughter.

This was quite an entertaining read, particularly the ways in which the trial worked in tandem with the events of the past. I felt like I was kept sufficiently on the edge of my seat, and though the ending was one I was rooting for and certainly saw foreshadowing of, it still had some good surprising elements that made the payoff of the overall story feel incredibly satisfying.

I will say that the characters, particularly Emily, felt like they lacked a level of depth that I would have wanted from such a character-driven story, but I think that this didn't quite bother me as much as it could have simply because I was so interested in the details of what happened to the dead family.

In all, I think this was a solid read, certainly not perfect but still incredibly entertaining and interesting, and absolutely a strong debut.

Sixteen-year-old Emily Keller is on trial for causing the deaths of a family of four, and although the case seems straightforward, it is anything but. Did Emily let her desire for acceptance go too far or were other factors at play? Will the jury believe her account of the evening or brand her as a liar?

Fine does an excellent job of portraying the deadly impacts of peer pressure and just how far some will go to feel accepted. The desire for acceptance and understanding is especially strong in teens/adolescents, and Fine really demonstrates how detrimental this desire can ultimately become if taken too far. Emily was an easy character to connect and empathize with, and I could feel her desperation for love and acceptance through Fine’s writing. This novel is an excellent read for teens as it demonstrates just how deadly peer pressure can become and the lengths it can drive a person to in order to feel understood.

This is an excellent YA novel and was an absolute pleasure to read and review!

** Content Warning: Mentions of SA, S/H, and substance abuse **

Emily is on trail for manslaughter, accused of leaving on a gas burner while babysitting that killed the whole family. Alternating between the trial and Emily's story leading up to the events of the family's death, we see how Emily's life went off track.

I overall liked this book, but I found Emily to not be written in a likeable way. I just kept wondering why she was doing the things she was doing. Hannah wasn't super popular or part of a major clique or anything, so Emily's motivations felt weird to me.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.