THE MURDER PARTY

The younger sister of a girl who died when things went awry at a clandestine murder mystery party suspects it wasn’t an accident.

Chinese American high school sophomore June Chan was heartbroken when her high-achieving, seemingly perfect sister, Lily, died. Stunned to learn that Lily had been regularly sneaking out to take part in Murder Club, whose members created and solved fake homicides, June and her loving and supportive parents find themselves weighed down by grief and unanswered questions. Lily was stabbed by a retractable prop knife that apparently malfunctioned, leading the police to determine that there were no signs of foul play. It’s only as June begins to learn strange details about the parties and Lily’s secretive friend group that she’s spurred to begin trying to puzzle out what actually happened. Along the way, she reestablishes her close friendship with kindhearted Zoey Williams, a Black-presenting friend she’s avoided in the months since Lily’s death, and begins to get to know longtime crush Alex Torres, who’s cued Latine and was also a Murder Club member. June is an effortlessly likable character with an earnest, self-deprecating, witty first-person narrative voice. The complex plotting of this whodunit is well paced, and classic genre tropes come together to propel the mystery toward a dramatic, satisfying conclusion.

An engaging mystery with a sympathetic, memorable sleuth at the helm.