Thrilling and complex, Karen McManus’s “One of Us is Lying” is a classic whodunnit mystery with a modern edge and plenty of twists and turns as the plot progresses. When Bayview High’s infamous gossip, Simon Kelleher, dies during detention, his fellow classmates are plunged into a criminal investigation in which they are the main suspects.
Intricate and intriguing, E. Lockhart’s “We Were Liars” provides both a captivating mystery and a bittersweet portrayal of young love. The Sinclairs are an extremely wealthy family that spends each summer on their private island, Beechwood. The readers are introduced to their charmed yet secretive lives through Cadence Sinclair, a teenager who suffers from amnesia and chronic migraines after a tragic accident that occurred on Beechwood when she was fifteen.
With an interesting premise that falls disappointingly flat, Katharine McGee’s “American Royals” portrays a fun, if shallow, alternate universe where the United States has a royal family.
Return to Beechwood with E. Lockhart’s “Family of Liars”, a prequel set in the 1980s to the modern “We Were Liars”. Focusing this time on Cadence’s aunt Carrie as a teenager, the book follows her during her seventeenth summer.
The final book of the Truly Devious trilogy, Maureen Johnson’s “The Hand on The Wall” is a satisfying conclusion to the series, even with its unnecessary amount of filler.
Maureen Johnson’s “The Vanishing Stair” is an intriguing and capable second book in the Ellingham trilogy. Following Stevie Bell in her return to Ellingham Academy, this book furthers both the current and twentieth century mysteries.
Twisting and complex, Maureen Johnson’s “Truly Devious” is an extremely solid start to a new YA mystery series. Centered around the prestigious boarding school Ellingham Academy, the novel follows amateur detective Stevie Bell as she begins her first year at the school. Ellingham is notorious for a double kidnapping and a murder that occurred in the early twentieth century, and Stevie is determined to solve the case while studying there.
Maureen Johnson’s “The Box in the Woods” is an intriguing and entertaining return to her Truly Devious trilogy. Stevie and her housemates Nate and Janelle are offered counselor jobs at a summer camp where four teenagers were brutally murdered in the 1970s. Told from both the point of view of characters in the current day and the past, the mysterious of Camp Sunny Pines begin to unravel towards a shocking conclusion.
Danielle Valentine’s “How to Survive Your Murder” offers a disappointingly flat execution of an interesting concept. Horror-obsessed teenager Alice Lawerence is coping with the murder of her older sister, Claire, a year after the incident. On the morning of the trial for the killer, she passes out in the courtroom bathroom and wakes up on last year’s Halloween night, with her sister beside her. Claire is alive again, and if Alice can solve her murder by midnight, she’ll stay that way.
Malinda Lo’s “A Scatter of Light” is a coming of age novel that sadly falls flat in comparison to its semi-companion piece: “Last Night at the Telegraph Club”. This novel centers Aria Tang West, a teenager sent to live with her grandmother in California as punishment for a scandal that she caused during her last week of senior year.
