A tremendous thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for my advanced reader copy of Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley Winstead. This book is available in the US on July 14, 2026!

The Story

From national bestselling author Ashley Winstead comes a buzzy, bloody new thriller about success, sisterhood, and demanding justice…by any means necessary.

What’s a girl got to do to get some fame, a few million record sales, and justice for murder?

Ten years ago, aspiring singer-actress Scout Sage lost the only thing that mattered: her sister, Georgia. Ever since Georgia’s mysterious death at a Hollywood party, Scout’s done her best to honor her memory, clawing her way through the industry and collecting a network of climbers along the way, fellow hot girls in stilettos with cutthroat ambition, a new Hollywood order.

But when a slew of targeted murders makes headlines across LA, all pointing to Scout as the killer, she turns overnight from a mid-tier pop star into the world’s most famous (alleged) murderer. Now everything she’s worked to build—including the justice she wants for Georgia—will fall apart unless Scout can prove she’s not guilty.

Meanwhile, the young and unusual detective assigned to her case, herself no stranger to tragedy, begins to unearth secrets not even Scout knows, let alone her millions of new fans. Particularly about the ways Georgia’s death connects to an even older pattern of crimes long hushed over in Hollywood—an old reign of terror that, if brought to light, could be the fuel that ignites a reckoning the world over.

My Thoughts

I had the absolute JOY of meeting Ashley Winstead at The Creepy Retreat back in February. Hot Girl Murder Club obviously wasn’t out yet, so she was talking about This Book Will Bury Me (which was also phenomenal, though I think my favorite of hers is The Last Housewife). She was starting to allude to HGMC though, so I obviously read it as soon as I got home.

This book was everything I wanted it to be. Who doesn’t love a story of women coming together to “passive aggressively” fight the slights they’ve been given over the years? The layers of mystery to how these women fit together just kept unfolding in ways you wouldn’t expect.

Yes, you sometimes want to roll your eyes at these young women, but that’s the whole point! In the end, you’re rooting for all of them, trying to solve the puzzle to ensure everyone gets out alive and unscathed.

Ashley Winstead is a phenomenal writer, managing to create these intense thrillers alongside lighter reads like The Future Saints (which my friend read and thoroughly enjoyed). The only thing that might have made Hot Girl Murder Club better would have been if it came out during March and Women’s History Month.

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