Sidekick Short Review: Girls Who Play Dead (2025) by Joelle Wellington

cover image of Girls Who Play Dead by Joelle Washington, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025.

The Basics

Page Length: 416

Audiobook Length: ~11 hours

Grade Reading Level: 9+

Target Audience Age: 14+

Goodreads Score: 3.54 out of 5

Buy it HERE

Setting: Contemporary fictional small-town, Prophet's Lake

Genre: Young Adult Mystery, Suburban Thriller

Topics: Cosmetics, Social Media Influencers, Murder, Teen Sleuths, LGBTQ+, Romance, Small-town Corruption

Plot: When the most popular girl in Prophet’s Lake, Erin Vaughn, is murdered, the town is thrown into turmoil. For her best friend, Kyla, coping means doing the only thing she knows how—pretending everything is fine. But beneath the surface, her life is unraveling. With her dad’s funeral home on the brink of bankruptcy, the pressure of captaining the dance team alone, and the weight of running their secret, illegal business by herself, Kyla doesn’t have the time—or the desire—to fall apart. Instead, she’s determined to find Erin’s killer, save her family’s business, and figure out who she is without Erin.

Mikky Graves, Kyla’s older brother, left Prophet’s Lake two years ago after struggling with his mental health, moving in with their mom. When he hears about Erin’s murder, he returns home, determined to support Kyla. But something isn’t right. She’s distant, secretive—changed in ways he can’t quite understand. As much as he wants to help, he can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something. Still, he’s determined to be there for her, to give her the space to grieve, and to help her avoid the kind of breakdown he once experienced.

As Kyla and Mikky begin to investigate Erin’s murder, they uncover the darker side of Prophet’s Lake—along with the beauty empire that employs most of its residents. The deeper they dig, the more they realize Erin had secrets of her own—dangerous ones. What starts as a search for answers quickly spirals into something much bigger, entangling them in small-town corruption, buried family secrets, and corporate fraud. The truth is out there—but so are the people determined to keep it hidden. Will Kyla and Mikky uncover the truth, or are they up against forces too powerful to expose?

You might like this book if you like:

• True crime podcasts

• Photography

• Escape Rooms/puzzles

• Books like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, We Were Liars, The Cousins, One of Us is Lying, Pretty Dead Queens, The Cheerleaders

• Shows like: Pretty Little Liars, Riverdale, Veronica Mars, 13 Reasons Why, Blood & Water

• Movies like: Enola Holmes, Heathers, Mean Girls, Thoroughbreds, Gone Girl

  
  

Other books written by this author: Their Vicious Games, The Blonde Dies First

Content

• Language: Mature language throughout

• Sex/Romance: There is mention of sex, but no descriptions or "open door" moments. There is one scene of passionate kissing.

• Violence/Scariness: This is a murder mystery, so there are descriptions of the way the body is found. The protagonists' family owns a funeral home, and prepares the body for the funeral. There are scenes of intense grief and mental health struggles. Suicide is briefly mentioned. There is a physical altercation between an adult and a minor, as well as emotional manipulation. Definite sense of danger throughout the book as the town tries to uncover the killer.

• Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: Teen drinking and allusions to drug use.

  
  

Book Talk Read Aloud Section

*What is a book talk? (Watch a how to video here. Read my blog post here)

If you have the physical book, read the first two pages of chapter 2 (pg. 8-9, through the second to last paragraph "What kind of haunting has Mikky left behind?")

Chapter 1 does a better job of setting up the book, but it includes descriptions of a funeral home preparing a body, which likely wouldn’t work well for a read-aloud. It might still be possible to use a selection from this chapter if those sections are omitted.

If you don't, read the same pages in the Kindle reading sample here.