Mystery fans will welcome another shocking missing teen case.
Her friends are missing from a camping trip gone bad and Claire can’t remember anything, but she’s determined to find them.
After catching her boyfriend sneaking off with another girl, there’s no way Claire is going to prom with him. Instead, the teen becomes a third wheel on a secret weekend trip to the mountains with her best friend, Kat, and Jesse, Kat’s boyfriend. The worst Claire is expecting is having to witness too many PDA’s between Jesse and Kat—especially since she has a secret crush on Jesse. When she wakes up alone on the mountain, hurt and with amnesia, that’s when the real trouble begins. Kat and Jesse are missing, possibly dead, and Claire can’t remember anything past their first night on the mountain. In this well-paced mystery, Thomas raises doubts about everyone, from Kat’s wealthy and influential ex-congresswoman grandmother to the mountain’s small-town residents to even Claire herself. When her friends’ ongoing disappearance causes her mental health issues and the FBI still hasn’t cracked the case, Claire begins her own investigation. The story is primarily told through Claire’s first-person narration, with later flashback chapters from Kat’s perspective offering more clues. The twists and turns accelerate until the final page as readers learn not just how the teens disappeared, but why. Most main characters are cued as White; Jesse is White and Mexican American.
Mystery fans will welcome another shocking missing teen case. (resources) (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1836-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining, heartfelt, and suspenseful: a superb addition to a beloved series.
Eighteen-year-old sleuth Stevie Bell is back to investigate another mystery in this stand-alone addition to the Truly Devious series.
Stevie is nursing a broken heart following her recent split from boyfriend David. Fed up with her parents’ lack of understanding and support—they regard her interest in solving murders as “creepy” and “weird”—she announces that she’s not coming home for Christmas. But now she’s at a loose end; spending winter break “alone on murder mountain” at Ellingham Academy, her Vermont boarding school, doesn’t seem ideal. So when the opportunity arises to accompany her close friend Nate to New York City, she willingly agrees. The third-person chapters switch between Stevie’s contemporary experience among a group of eccentric, often-clashing residents of a Manhattan apartment building and a young woman named Blue who becomes entangled in a cult in the 1970s. A trail of clues is laid that Stevie can’t resist following. Readers will be kept guessing how the intertwining storylines fit together until the very end. The novel expands to explore Stevie’s relationships and growth, including her ongoing management of her anxiety disorder. The marvelously clever dialogue, abundance of heart, and witty, memorable, and well-rounded cast elevate this beyond standard mystery fare. Both timelines establish the New York City setting as its own character. Stevie and Blue read white.
Entertaining, heartfelt, and suspenseful: a superb addition to a beloved series. (map) (Mystery. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063256019
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
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