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Dead Girls Can't Scream
Laurie Wentworth must run for her life after she witnesses a man stuffing a body into the trunk of a car while she is out for a jog. Original.
- GenresHorror
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 4, 2026
Originally printed back in 1994 but I have a 2016 reprint which is fine because I really wanted to read this one.
The blurb on the back is very misleading but in an actually good way. You believe you are going to be following this girl named Laurie Wentworth who just happened to be out jogging and thought she saw a person putting a dead body of a girl in their trunk.
This killer knows she saw him, and he is going to get rid of her. This is not his first time nor his second time having to deal with killing someone...he has a passion for it. Taking a picture of each victim after the light leaves their eyes and he already has a slew of victims lined up.
Nice build up huh? Except that Laurie is not our heroine.
That would be a girl named Katie.
Katie is now the lead in the school play, replacing a girl named Millicent. Not the way she wanted to get out of the chorus by taking the role of a dead girl murdered and found in the dump. The drama/English teacher doesn't care as long as the show goes on, and he has unconventional methods in making sure his students don't use Cliff Notes to learn about Shakespeare.
Katie should be at least a tiny bit thrilled as her boyfriend Steve is the male lead. He's handsome, witty, talented and his father is the owner of one of the biggest fast-food chains in town. He hasn't been in town long but there is still so much Katie doesn't know about his past since Steve isn't one for sharing.
When the murders start happening, Steve seems a little too interested in how the police are handling the case. This was way before true crime became the big thing and well, we need a roster of red herrings.
Like the new janitor.
He used to go to the high school when most of the parents of the current students attended and graduated with a bright future ahead of him. Then college became a bust and he turned to drugs which messed up his life but now he has a second chance thanks to people like Katie's best friend Nicole's dad being on the school committee. All of the girls find him creepy except Nicole by the way he watches them just a little too close...
Nicole is an interesting character because she has a sort of sixth sense about things. She can tell when there is going to be a pop quiz but lately, Nicole is concerned for Katie because she keeps hearing voices warning her that her bestie might be in danger. It also doesn't help that there is something about Steve that goes into overdrive whenever he is around Nicole, a very dark blue aura...
We get some other students like a girl named Tracy big into gossip, a boy named Mike and a member of the drama club who is named Ralph but goes by the nickname "Rage". He and Steve are friends from childhood when they both lived in a different town until Rage moved first with his family. Steve has only been here for four months, and both boys couldn't be more different.
Very early in the book we don't learn who the killer is, but we learn that he has bigger plans than just killing girls in a plot that you can tell was pre-1999. In hindsight, it makes the story all the creepier and adds a twist to just a psycho stalking teenage girls. We get some big reveals and a climax that seems never-ending, but it just builds up that tension.
There is no real epilogue, but the last chapter of the book clears up a few things, and the mood gets lightened by a traditional laugh despite traumatizing events.
Dead Girls Can't Scream is more of a YA thriller than straight up horror, but it still has the elements of the genre that are still going strong to create an intense story.
The blurb on the back is very misleading but in an actually good way. You believe you are going to be following this girl named Laurie Wentworth who just happened to be out jogging and thought she saw a person putting a dead body of a girl in their trunk.
This killer knows she saw him, and he is going to get rid of her. This is not his first time nor his second time having to deal with killing someone...he has a passion for it. Taking a picture of each victim after the light leaves their eyes and he already has a slew of victims lined up.
Nice build up huh? Except that Laurie is not our heroine.
That would be a girl named Katie.
Katie is now the lead in the school play, replacing a girl named Millicent. Not the way she wanted to get out of the chorus by taking the role of a dead girl murdered and found in the dump. The drama/English teacher doesn't care as long as the show goes on, and he has unconventional methods in making sure his students don't use Cliff Notes to learn about Shakespeare.
Katie should be at least a tiny bit thrilled as her boyfriend Steve is the male lead. He's handsome, witty, talented and his father is the owner of one of the biggest fast-food chains in town. He hasn't been in town long but there is still so much Katie doesn't know about his past since Steve isn't one for sharing.
When the murders start happening, Steve seems a little too interested in how the police are handling the case. This was way before true crime became the big thing and well, we need a roster of red herrings.
Like the new janitor.
He used to go to the high school when most of the parents of the current students attended and graduated with a bright future ahead of him. Then college became a bust and he turned to drugs which messed up his life but now he has a second chance thanks to people like Katie's best friend Nicole's dad being on the school committee. All of the girls find him creepy except Nicole by the way he watches them just a little too close...
Nicole is an interesting character because she has a sort of sixth sense about things. She can tell when there is going to be a pop quiz but lately, Nicole is concerned for Katie because she keeps hearing voices warning her that her bestie might be in danger. It also doesn't help that there is something about Steve that goes into overdrive whenever he is around Nicole, a very dark blue aura...
We get some other students like a girl named Tracy big into gossip, a boy named Mike and a member of the drama club who is named Ralph but goes by the nickname "Rage". He and Steve are friends from childhood when they both lived in a different town until Rage moved first with his family. Steve has only been here for four months, and both boys couldn't be more different.
Very early in the book we don't learn who the killer is, but we learn that he has bigger plans than just killing girls in a plot that you can tell was pre-1999. In hindsight, it makes the story all the creepier and adds a twist to just a psycho stalking teenage girls. We get some big reveals and a climax that seems never-ending, but it just builds up that tension.
There is no real epilogue, but the last chapter of the book clears up a few things, and the mood gets lightened by a traditional laugh despite traumatizing events.
Dead Girls Can't Scream is more of a YA thriller than straight up horror, but it still has the elements of the genre that are still going strong to create an intense story.
June 29, 2021
In Dead Girls Can't Scream by Janice Harrell, Laurie jogs by the same corner every day, but on one particular day, she sees something she's not supposed to see . . . a body being stuffed into the trunk of a car. The psycho killer knows he has to kill Laurie now that she's seen him. Will she live or die?
As a teenager, I was a huge fan of The Secret Diaries trilogy and The Murder Game by Janice Harrell. Whenever I'd go to Waldenbooks bookstore at the mall, I was always eager to see if they had any other books written by her. Unfortunately, they rarely had any other books by this author other than the Vampire Twins series.
Fast forward to this year when I found out that Netflix was releasing three Fear Street movies based on R.L. Stine's book series of the same name. It made me want to reread through that book series and some of the others I had grown up on. I went on ThriftBooks.com to see if there were any books by Janice Harrell that I was unaware of, and I came across the book Dead Girls Can't Scream. I had no idea that she had written any books other than the ones I mentioned above. Excited, I decided to order it, and I just recently finished reading the book.
Where Dead Girls Can't Scream was written well for the target audience, I felt like it didn't have panache of The Secret Diaries or The Murder Game. Maybe if I had read it as a teen, I might have felt differently, but it just wasn't as good compared to her other novels I've read. Don't get me wrong, it was still written exceptionally well, and I enjoyed reading it even as an adult.
Janice Harrell did a good job at throwing suspicion on three different characters, which kept me on my toes. I wasn't really sure if any of them were the actual killer though because I felt like they were the obvious suspects, but I didn't have anyone else that I really suspected. I was shocked at who was revealed to be the killer. Looking back, it was a bit obvious that it was that character, so I don't know how I missed picking up on those clues. I'll blame it on the fact that I was reading Dead Girls Can't Scream in the wee hours of the night.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dead Girls Can't Scream by Janice Harrell and gave it four out of five stars for the reasons mentioned above. If you enjoyed this book, then you'll love Temptation (Secret Diaries, #1), Betrayal (Secret Diaries, #2), and Escape (Secret Diaries, #3) by Janice Harrell.
As a teenager, I was a huge fan of The Secret Diaries trilogy and The Murder Game by Janice Harrell. Whenever I'd go to Waldenbooks bookstore at the mall, I was always eager to see if they had any other books written by her. Unfortunately, they rarely had any other books by this author other than the Vampire Twins series.
Fast forward to this year when I found out that Netflix was releasing three Fear Street movies based on R.L. Stine's book series of the same name. It made me want to reread through that book series and some of the others I had grown up on. I went on ThriftBooks.com to see if there were any books by Janice Harrell that I was unaware of, and I came across the book Dead Girls Can't Scream. I had no idea that she had written any books other than the ones I mentioned above. Excited, I decided to order it, and I just recently finished reading the book.
Where Dead Girls Can't Scream was written well for the target audience, I felt like it didn't have panache of The Secret Diaries or The Murder Game. Maybe if I had read it as a teen, I might have felt differently, but it just wasn't as good compared to her other novels I've read. Don't get me wrong, it was still written exceptionally well, and I enjoyed reading it even as an adult.
Janice Harrell did a good job at throwing suspicion on three different characters, which kept me on my toes. I wasn't really sure if any of them were the actual killer though because I felt like they were the obvious suspects, but I didn't have anyone else that I really suspected. I was shocked at who was revealed to be the killer. Looking back, it was a bit obvious that it was that character, so I don't know how I missed picking up on those clues. I'll blame it on the fact that I was reading Dead Girls Can't Scream in the wee hours of the night.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dead Girls Can't Scream by Janice Harrell and gave it four out of five stars for the reasons mentioned above. If you enjoyed this book, then you'll love Temptation (Secret Diaries, #1), Betrayal (Secret Diaries, #2), and Escape (Secret Diaries, #3) by Janice Harrell.
September 5, 2012
I read this book a while back and don't remember much except that it was really good!!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews