Lauren and her mom have relocated to Happy Valley, Pennsylvania (the home of Penn State) for a new beginning. Lauren is desperate to escape the stigma of a public scandal, and her mom is excited to finally live locally to a long-distance boyfriend. Lauren’s efforts to build her reputation as a great soccer player all seem for naught, however, when she learns that the boy she’s been having a casual affair with was the last person to see his former girlfriend alive. Then one year later, his brother finds his own girlfriend dead of an overdose. Are the wealthy Crestmont brothers hiding deadly secrets, or did they both really end up in the wrong places at the wrong times?

Even though I am giving this a 3-star review, for reasons I will explain later, I did enjoy this debut. It was so fast-paced and well-written that I finished it in a day. It’s giving I Know What You Did Last Summer vibes, but with higher stakes because the two female victims were in relationships with the suspects. Everyone in town knows that the intimate partner is usually the perpetrator when it comes to violent crimes against women, but they also know that the influential Crestmont family has the resources and the connections to keep Robbie and Trevor out of jail, and permanently erased from the suspect list. I thought the author did a great job developing the mystery and building suspense. She also made all of the main characters sympathetic so that the reader is invested in finding out how and if each character's innocence would be proven.

The reasons that this one doesn’t rise to a 5-star mystery for me are (1) the degree of suspension of disbelief required for the story to work; and (2) the motive for the first killing, and which ultimately set off an avalanche of future violence, just didn’t make sense to me. I still don't know why the suspect(s) did it.

Without spoiling the plot, there is a big reveal about 25% into the story that significantly impacts the main character Lauren’s perspective on the crimes and her suspicions. Even though Lauren is 17 and clearly quite bright and independent, she doesn’t call the police or trust any adult with her findings. She doesn’t even make any kind of permanent record of the findings for herself. We’re talking about an actual murder here, but the reader is asked to belief that Lauren isn’t sure what to do, or that she is too scared to make an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers? This is 2024! True crime podcasts are a thing! 🤪 It's just too big of a pill to swallow, especially considering that it is her decision not to involve law enforcement that must happen in order for the rest of the events in the novel to occur.

Finally, and maybe it’s just me, but I am concerned that this novel, like many other YA titles I’ve read over the last few years, does not depict a single adult who behaves like one. Literally, every adult in this novel who interacts with a main characters is an awful, selfish, narcissistic person. The parents who we don’t actually meet on the page are all enabling, if not encouraging, underage drinking, drug use, and sexual promiscuity in their homes. None of the teenagers in this book can point to even one adult who has proven themselves capable of exhibiting good judgment or making a sound decision to protect the minors they have a duty to protect. I don’t think this is representative of most teenager’s lives, and I don’t understand the point of creating a fictional world where the only people that a teenager can trust are other teenagers who are just as angry, depressed, confused, cynical, and disillusioned as themselves.

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group/Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) for the opportunity to read and review this novel. All opinions are my own.