Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing for providing me an advanced copy of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.

I really wanted to like this book. Trust me, I did. It was my very first ARC, the cover was gorgeous, and the premise of Beth March's death drew me in. I expected something similar to One of Us Is Lying but between sisters, and that immediately had my attention. I'm very sorry to say that there are exactly two good things that I can say about this book:

1. The exploration, thanks to its contemporary setting, of both Jo's and Aunt March's sexuality. Both of those seemed far more accurate than the original novel.
2. The chapter where Beth dies (since her death is revealed in the blurb, I will not consider it to be a spoiler) was, I believe, the most beautiful chapter of this book. And now we're done with what I thought was good about this novel.

Overall, Beth Is Dead could have and should have been 150 pages shorter. The length of this book created a very convoluted plot where characters were plot devices instead of driving the plot. A subplot was introduced, resolved in four chapters, then a new subplot would be introduced. Repeat the formula until the book ends. The plot forced them to act in certain ways instead of it all happening naturally. Their characterizations changed as the plot necessitated it. None of them were individuals in their own right with a unique personality, and that is something I truly believe to be a significant flaw in this book. This was worse when almost every named character (and yes, I counted) was at one point considered a suspect. That's too many suspects, and it became fruitless to care about who actually ended up doing it because some new person was going to be introduced for the sake of becoming a suspect. Once again, everyone was a plot device. Furthermore, there are 7 different first-person POVs: Meg, Jo, and Amy's perspective both in the past and the present + Beth's past perspective. Switching every chapter between past and present/between characters became exhausting and made it difficult to distinguish which character you were reading about in that chapter. Over the course of the book, Jo and Amy blended into the same person, as did Beth and Meg.

Also, don't get me wrong, I love when a book has amateur detectives figure out the crime before the trained professionals, but holy crap, it seemed like the cops weren't even there. At one point, I thought the author had forgotten about the two detectives altogether. And there was a pedophile in the book? I'm mentioning that more as a trigger warning than anything else, but instead of having real impact on the story, it was just to introduce a new suspect. No, I'm not revealing who killed Beth.

The author relied on the same three descriptions to try and paint a picture, but since it was the same three descriptions every time, they eventually lost their meaning. More of a minor nitpick, but if I read "hot tears ran down my cheeks" or "a flash of anger rushed through me" one more time, I will throw my Kindle across the room. And everything the characters did was rushed because they were on the plot's timeline instead of letting the plot form around what the characters did.

In short: confusing, convoluted, flat, and rushed. 1.5 stars. Unfortunately, I do not recommend this book to anyone.