This book follows 16 year old Emily Keller, aka Keller the Killer as dubbed by her community, as she stands trial for manslaughter following the deaths of four people (including two young children).

The story flips between past and present - which is not my favorite- but was important for context here. As a mom of young kids, some parts of this were extremely hard to read and also enraging at times. I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters really, but I did feel for Emily who was just trying to fit in at high school.

But the story itself is gripping and I kept going because I had to know the truth. I’d say this book is equal parts heartbreaking as it is suspenseful. The chapters are super short, which made it easy to read.

I wish Good Reads would allow us to give half stars - this one would be a 3.5 stars for me.

My first ever review of a book from NetGalley and WoW!! This book blew me away.
Emily Keller just wants to be popular, but a series of poor decisions leaves her in court for man slaughter. The story flips between the past, showing the events running up to her being charged, and the trial. I love thé format and found it easy to follow. I was gripped all the way through the story and I found myself not wanting to put it down which is always the sign of a great book! Highly recommend!!

Emily wanted to be popular, to have a cool friend, someone to help her forget her life with her alcoholic mom and life in the trailer park. When she meets Hannah she thinks she has found that friend, someone to go to parties with and drink with, but Emily quickly realizes she is in over her head and when she ends up on trial for manslaughter she realizes how much she has lost her way. This was a great story about addiction in all his manifestations, friendship and taking responsibility for your own actions. There are some definitely some trigger warnings here for sexual assault and self harm but both topics are covered with dignity and care. A great book!

This was such a good read! I’d highly encourage young girls 15+ to read this. It’s a heartbreaking storyline about how making a few stupid choices could truly change the rest of your life. I have been seeing this title around a bit and I’m so glad that I got the opportunity to read it! As a mom and adult I still enjoyed this book because as a teen I didn’t make the best decisions either and the world in which we live today….. doesn’t make doing the right thing easy. Thank you for giving me the change to read this!!

Girl on Trial is an intriguing and captivating novel.

Sixteen year old Emily Keller lives in a trailer with her alcohol addicted mother and twin brother. She is unhappy with her life and is longing for acceptance and friends.

This longing has led her into becoming friends with a girl named Hannah, who also has scars but hides behind fake smiles and friends. This friendship is the biggest regret of Emily's life because she is now being put on trial for a crime she had no intention of doing. Would she get a justified verdict. You'll have to read to find out!!

The topics that strikes me when reading were peer pressure, social hierarchy and abuse (alcohol, drug and sexual). As teenagers, we are faced with trying to prove a point and this leads us to taking on and maintaining false pretenses.

While reading this novel, I remembered the phrase one of my high school teachers instilled in me. 'Friends will bring you, but they don't carry you back!!' This story of this novel is a classic example.

There were many emotions, I enjoyed this story as it reminded me of my teenage days and the problems we faced and tried to hide. Growing up in a distant household, I can relate to the protagonist because we share similar feelings.

This is the first novel I have read by the author Kathleen Fine. I enjoyed it. I am looking forward to reading more of her novels. The only disappointment was the ending was predictable. I anticipated the true culprit was indeed the person I assumed from the start of getting to know the character.

Regardless, it was a great story, my favorite character would have to be Nate Keller. He does not stray or allows his peers to instigate him. He knows what he wants.

I would recommend this book and I rate it 4 out of five stars.

A difficult read, as other reviewers have pointed out there is substantial mention of drug abuse and sexual assault, but still a tale that needs to be told

Thank you to NetGalley & CamCat books for the ARC!

WOW this book was dark.

GoT follows Emily, a 16 year old girl on trial for manslaughter of a family of four.

This book needs so many trigger warnings: sexual assault, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, etc.

I love a timeline jumping story, especially when it’s very clear what the dates are when jumping back and forth. So this book had that going for it.

However, this story makes you feel icky in the same way that 13 reasons why did. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

BRIEF SPOILER BELOW:






I was going to give 3 stars until the whole pregnancy nonsense. I’m not super interested in glorying choosing to give birth to your rapists baby. Not for me no thank you.

thanks to netgallery & camcat books for the free earc in exchange for a fair and honest review!

this story is perfect. i have absolutely no qualms with the story. it's amazing, down to the pacing and characters. the origin of my complaints is the writing style. from the beginning, the writing was quite clunky and occasionally a little cringy - although this calmed down a lot by the middle of the book. to me, it seems as if the first 100 or so pages need another round of editing. that is the only reason this isn't a 5 star book.
this is a perfect example of how peer pressure works, and although there were a surprisingly large amount of characters with very little plot relevance (nate, steph, the third triplet (why couldn't they just be twins?)) this could be completely disregarded in the name of realism. because i found this book to be so much more realistic than many other examples of how peer pressure and teenage mistakes happen. so give this a read. its worth it.

Emily and her twin brother Nate live with their single mom Deborah in the small trailer she’s 16 and has always wanted to be part of the popular group and although she’s had a lifelong friend in Steph the grass always seems to be more greener at the popular girls house. So when a girl named Hannah who is part of that group starts wanting to hang out with them Ali she is Uber excited about it she even invites Hannah over and they drink some of her mom Deborah‘s beer because Deborah is a big-time alcoholic and this makes Hannah think Emily is cool when they go to babysit the Thompson’s girls Kayde and Sophie Emily isn’t comfortable with leaving them home alone to go across the street to the park to meet Hannah‘s boyfriend topper in his best friend chuck due to her wanting to be popular she does it anyway and when Chuck acts like he was owed sex for his appearance at the park she is totally turned off by him and eshe’s glad to make her escape when little Sophie woke up. She also finds it weird that Hannah thinks Mr. Thompson is good looking and when Emily runs into him at the thrift store and he insist on buying her expensive boots and then taking her home she gets a creepy feel from him so when he drops her off she is happy to get out of the car. One night after a party however when Emily gets sick from too much drinking she asked Hannah to bring her home but Hannah said she will call her a car only for creepy Mr. Thompson to show up and instead of bringing her home he brings her to his house because his wife and two daughters are out of town and he totally takes advantage of the situation and it leaves Emily traumatized so when Hannah once again ask her to babysit the Thompson’s kids because she herself will be out of town at her grandmas funeral Emily refuses but when her mom finds out she guilt Emily into doing it everything goes wrong and Emily finds herself on trial for the families murder. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I also enjoyed the fact that the author made it clear that money and status does not make good parents in bad parents can be found at any class level. Emily‘s mom loved her and her twin brother Nate but at the same time was an enabler an alcoholic and a serial dater but having said that I still love this book and highly recommend it I want to think Net Galley and books go social media for my free Ark copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Honestly, this book reminded me a lot of The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It had the same vibes and gave me the same kind of suspiciousness every time a new piece of information was introduced and I loved that so much!

Despite my giving this book a 3.5/5 rating, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The characters proved to have depth and personality not just based off of surface level, trivial things, but more serious, real issues, which was one thing that drew me in. Emily, Hannah, Debbie, and everyone else were written so well, I actually disliked Hannah for a while, even Mr. Thomas (who I hate hate HATE) and Chuck (who I hate to the same extent that I do Mr. Thomas) and Topper felt so real I couldn't help but feel some genuine upsetting feelings and emotions! Another big thing that made me really like this book, was the fact that it didn't include unnecessary information or descriptions of things that didn't have anything to do with the plot! It stayed on track, and it kept me engaged by being interesting, enfuriating, disgusting (at times), and took me on a rollercoaster of emotions.

The only reason I couldn't give this book a 4/5 rating, was because just like The Girl on the Train, it started off a bit slow, though this is only in my opinion, and other readers might find this to be completely untrue and this is where preference come into play. But know this, just because I couldn't give it 4 stars, does not make it any less of a good read.

I genuinely enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to anyone who liked The Girl on the Train. I promise this was just as good!

This novel focuses on sixteen-year-old Emily, who is on trial for the manslaughter of two adults and two children after, it is claimed, she accidentally left on a stove burner while babysitting, causing them to be poisoned by carbon monoxide. Emily, who lives in a trailer park in Baltimore with her addict mother, has had a difficult adolescence; drifting away from old friends, she fell in with a new and rougher crowd. But is Emily really responsible for this family's death, or is something more going on? This debut thriller felt tremendously uneven to me: there are a few things about it that are unexpectedly good, such as the well-observed details about Emily's daily life, and the complex portrayal of her mother, who could easily have been pigeonholed as an out-and-out villain. It's also well-paced and immersive, and I liked that Emily was facing more realistic stakes rather than being on trial for murder (for example). But it's ultimately very unconvincing (would a crime like this really attract so much press attention, let alone the nickname 'Keller the Killer'?) and I didn't find the courtroom scenes believable at all. It's awkwardly written, especially the dialogue, and badly edited, as other reviewers have pointed out. The message about 'peer pressure' is hammered home so hard it feels like it should be written as 'the moral of the story' at the start, and I also felt this was a short-sighted, limited portrayal of adolescence. So, some promise here, but it felt like an early draft rather than a finished novel.

This book took a while for me to be completely submersed, but once I did get into it it was easy to read.

The author done a brilliant job using different tenses to captivate the reader, and was great at capturing emotive issues in the real world.

I liked this story about 16-year-old Emily
It's a thought-provoking tale
You realise how quickly a young person can get themselves into bad situations quickly
The need to fit in and be accepted is at the heart of this story
Recommended reading

The chapters changed from past to present and really hyped up the mystery of the book. At first, I wasn’t really sure I liked the story, but I kept reading and it did get better. Such a heartbreaking story, but also very eye-opening!

The story flowed well and the characters were well developed. I recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.


****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

Firstly thank you to NetGalley and they author for an ARC of this book. This is the authors debut and it was certainly a five star read for me.

The story is of teenager Emily Keller dubbed “Keller the killer” who is on trial for the manslaughter of a family of four. The book jumps back and forth from the days of Emily’s trial and also the days leading up to the incident in question.

I raced through this book and found it hard to put down. The story covers sexual abuse, rape and self harm and is also quite a sad thriller. I can’t wait to read more from Kathleen Fine

Synopsis (from Netgalley, the provider of the book for me to review.)
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Does doing one bad thing make you a bad person?

Sixteen-year-old Emily Keller, known by the media as Keller the Killer, is accused of causing the deaths of four family members, including young children. Emily is one of the youngest females to be accused of a crime so heinous, making this the nation’s biggest trial of the year. But what really happened that fateful night―and who’s responsible―is anything but straightforward.

Living in a trailer park in Baltimore with her twin brother and alcoholic mother, Emily’s life hasn’t been easy. She’s had to grow up fast, and like any teen, has made questionable decisions in a desperate attempt to fit in with her peers. Will her mistakes amount to a guilty verdict and a life in prison? It’s up to the jury to decide.

My answer is no ... we all make mistakes but Emily is kind of heinous. And devious. and Unlikeable....this book will be very polarizing so I will recommend it to book clubs and my patrons will eat it up as well. Expertly crafted, utterly readable --- fantastic book!
#shortbutsweetreviews