Keep Your Friends Close by Cynthia Murphy 📖

Chloe Roberts is on top of the world. After a stellar first year at the prestigious Morton Academy, she’s a shoo-in for Head Girl and a coveted position in the school’s secret society, Jewel and Bone. But her dreams are shattered when her best friend, Nikhita Patel, unfairly snatches the top spot—and steals Chloe's boyfriend at the same time.

Heartbroken and humiliated, Chloe discovers a shocking truth: Jewel and Bone isn’t as secret as she thought. The rest of the school despises the Jewels, and there’s even a “Book of Crime and Punishment” cataloging their misdeeds. Things take a very dark turn when the names in the book start to correlate with murders of Jewel and Bone members on campus. Suddenly, anyone could be a suspect.

And now, Chloe must navigate a web of lies and deceit to get to the bottom of this twisted game before she’s next on the kill list.

A secret society, boarding school and back-stabbing friends, what more could you need right? Well, maybe a slightly faster pace for the first half?

I mean, the book was okay, but the intro was too long. I kept waiting for someone to finally die 😂😂 I think the first death occurs maybe 40% of the book, can't be sure, but after that the pace picks up. I liked Chloe as a main character, she was pretty real most of the time.

After getting new roomates, her character development sky rocketed and I'm super glad for it. The only thing I disliked about her was the whole Theo spiel. Like, he cheated on you with your ex-bff?? Broke up with you on your first day back to school?? Girl, burn the man and move on?? Instead, she keeps talking to him and letting him hug her and whatnot...

Claire and Amani were very interesting characters and I was pretty satisfied with the conclusion. The plot twists and characters were fun enough. I even liked the 1999 setting but honestly, the author wanted to convince us so bad that she kept dropping random references to things. Like, who would in their right mind talks about their personal items by mentioning specific colors and brands:

"Oh I need to check something on the blue iMac computer."

The whole clique thing would sometimes remind be of Mean Girls. That's why I keep dropping those GIFs, it just fits with the story so well 😂😂 I kept imagining if Regina was a president of the not-so-secret society and the setting was not a regular Americal high school, but a prestigious boarding school where it's all about getting the highest scores and sabotaging your colleagues because you just need that top stop in the essay competition - it would look exactly like this 😂

They literally expelled Chloe from their friend group and there's even a scene where the main mean girl spills wine over the MCs white dress??

So Mean Girl coded.