Even though I was disappointed I still think this would be a good book if you don’t normally read this genre. The story is written in first person, with chapters written in italics, that weren't clear about whom they were about.

So imagine my surprise when this book revealed itself to me as a grounded, smart, nail-biting thriller with a powerfully dark conclusion. Honestly, I went into this one just because I needed to read it before publication, but I wasn’t exactly excited about it.Probably this is just my own limited empathetic skills preventing me from being able to fully appreciate the fear engendered by this contact from a girl believed dead so long ago, but it took me about half way through the book to appreciate that her paranoia had some grounds, and it wasn’t til the ending that I understood her and completely appreciated her fear. In this style, we are given bits and clues and a red herring or two, and all the reader has to do is put this mystery together. I think many of us have been bullied before, but not to the degree displayed in this book (hopefully). Maybe that had been the problem all along; Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down.

When Louise receives the friend request from Maria, you can only imagine how freaked out she becomes. She is still emotionally hankering after her ex-husband who left her for a younger woman when she got pregnant. Trying to piece together exactly what happened that night, she soon discovers there’s much she didn’t know.This one caught my attention when I saw it because there was something fascinating about the title and synopsis. The author, Laura Marshall, expertly carries Louise's story in alternating chapters entitled 1989 and 2016.

That said, I can be all about slow-paced books if they are immersive enough, and FRIEND REQUEST is as much a fascinating character study about the cruelty of teenage girl cliques, as it is a murder mystery. But all in all, I had really good time reading Friend Request along with my friends and I would recommend it to thriller lovers. She was just young, stupid, insecure, and desperate to find her place in the social stratosphere that is High School and as adult Louise condemns herself for her past actions (something I wish fills my bullies with shame everyday) you almost want to reach out and let her know not to be so hard on herself. When she receives a Facebook friend request from Maria Weston, a young girl who died during their school leavers dance Louise panics.

Although, this story didn’t grab some of us at first because of the mean girl stuff going on within the storyline we did appreciate the different perspectives from being a mean girl and someone who is targeted by a mean girl. I thought this was done very well, the two stories unraveling at the same time, both of them kept me on the edge and kept me trying to figure this all out (and I never did). Nicki came up with such an excellent ending about Maria that I was so sure she had got it right because it would have been amazing!

The other woman barely features in the book, but I don't have much compassion for someone who has an affair with a married man, knowing there is a very young child involved. Flashing back twenty-five years prior, Maria Weston is the new girl in school, and she isn't exactly well liked.With her mesmerizing debut, Laura Marshall offers a timely and essential story of how who we were shapes who we become, the hidden cost of our increasingly connected world, and the dangerous shape that revenge can take in our modern era.