Everyone In The Group Chat Dies a shallow but fun read

Tonally, the best comparison is 1996's horror-comedy, Scream

- Myle Yan Tay

EVERYONE IN THE GROUP CHAT DIES By L.M. Chilton Mystery/Head of Zeus/ Paperback/368 pages/$19.79 ★★★☆☆

Kirby Cornell is working a dead-end job, wondering where her life went. She never calls her expectant mother, her once-flourishing career in journalism has tanked and even her group chat of her best friends/former housemates is completely dormant.

But then unexpectedly, it buzzes to life with a single message. "Everyone in the group chat dies."

With that single text, Kirby's dishevelled life is thrown into further disarray as she tries to figure out who is targeting her friends and how she can stop him or her, all while accruing 10,000 steps a day on her Fitbit fitness tracker.

L.M. Chilton's Everyone In The Group Chat Dies is the latest of his tongue-in-cheek thrillers that merge murder with millennial anxiety. Tonally, the best comparison is 1996's horror-comedy, Scream. But instead of teenagers navigating high school homicides, this novel follows early adults, listless, lost and fearing certain death.

It is a page-turner because of its fairly simple prose and surprising hooks, but it is also frequently frustrating due to its off-putting structure and obtuse information dumps.