Gory and campy horror, perfect for the Halloween season.
An escape room competition turns deadly when contestants start dying one by one.
Seventeen-year-old Persey and seven other young adults qualify for the first annual escape room All-Star Competition for a chance to win a cash prize of $10 million and become ultrafamous. The competition, formerly run by Escape-Capades (now under new management after a scandal led to the murder-suicide of its previous owners), has high stakes and supposedly impossible-to-break puzzles and only the best of the best—Persey included—are competing. Persey can certainly do with the money if she wins, but it’s obvious that something is very wrong with the competition, as people start getting killed in the increasingly dangerous rooms, with no option left but to go forward. The survivors need to work together and cooperate, but suspicion abounds, as one of them may be the killer. The question is why? This stand-alone prequel companion to McNeil’s #MurderTrending series combines inventive, geeky puzzles; twisted locked-room(s) murder mysteries; and vengeful horror. Flashbacks to Persey’s abusive childhood are interspersed throughout the narrative and give insight into her frame of mind and motivation; other characters are less well fleshed-out. Although the main plot twist is telegraphed, it doesn’t ruin the fun of its gory puzzle-break-or-die premise. Persey is assumed White in a diverse cast.
Gory and campy horror, perfect for the Halloween season. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-02626-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Freeform/Disney
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2020
An engrossing narrative that gently but directly explores complex relationships.
A 16-year-old girl finds friendship and questions social hierarchies at her boarding school.
After Adele Joubert is demoted from her favored place among the popular girls and sent to live in a room where a former student died, she begins to question the carefully structured hierarchy of her community. Within Keziah Christian Academy, a school for mixed-race students in 1965 Swaziland, a class system separates the rich from the poor, dictating who eats first at meals and who gets access to the best textbooks. Hair texturism, colorism, and the legitimacy of their parents’ relationships also create divisions that Adele, who is of black and white ancestry, challenges with her budding friendship with her new roommate, Lottie Diamond, a poor outcast of Jewish, Scottish, and Zulu heritage. When classmate Darnell Parns, who is coded as neurodivergent, goes missing, Adele pushes boundaries aside to search for him and, in the process, learns more about her own complicated origins in the sweeping hills where Keziah is situated. With a critical emphasis on power dynamics among the multiracial students, the story moves quickly, focusing on Adele’s interpersonal development. The gorgeous imagery sets the scene wonderfully, and there is mention of the religious and geographical colonization represented in the book, the hazy morals of the adults, and the relationships between black, white, and mixed-race citizens of Swaziland, but the narrative doesn’t dig too deeply into these subjects.
An engrossing narrative that gently but directly explores complex relationships. (Historical fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51557-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A murder mystery with much to say about modern-day segregation, policing, and personal biases.
Social commentary set against the backdrop of the murder of a Mississippi town’s first Black homecoming queen.
Nova Albright is gorgeous, charitable, and a shoo-in for homecoming queen. She’s also the target of Tinsley McArthur’s vitriol, as the title of queen has been in Tinsley’s White family for generations. When Nova ultimately wins, Tinsley unleashes a drunken tirade and threatens to kill her in a rant that one of Tinsley’s best friends records on her phone. The next morning, Nova is found dead in the Sacred Hearts Slave Cemetery, a neighborhood site she spent her spare time maintaining. All signs point to Tinsley as the culprit, but the investigation isn’t progressing fast enough for Duchess Simmons, a Black girl who is Nova’s best friend and the daughter of the town’s police chief. As Duchess takes matters into her own hands in an attempt to get to the bottom of Nova’s demise, Tinsley believes that the only way she can clear her name is by finding the actual murderer. But both girls quickly realize they’re in over their heads as they unearth truths about race, family secrets, and trauma during their investigations. The twisty, tragic plot at this story’s center is shocking and effective overall but too often becomes encumbered by heavy-handed commentary and dialogue that doesn’t sound like natural teenage speech.
A murder mystery with much to say about modern-day segregation, policing, and personal biases. (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56854-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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