Category Archives: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Review: How to Survive a Slasher by Justine Pucella Winans

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How to Survive a Slasher by Justine Pucella Winans

How to Survive a Slasher
Justine Pucella Winans
Bloomsbury
Published March 11, 2025

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About How to Survive a Slasher

You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight meets Scream in this YA slasher that turns classic horror tropes on their heads.

Few people can say they faced the infamous Satterville Wolf Man and lived. But CJ Smith can.

She doesn’t talk about that, though.

CJ has survived the horror movie that is her life by following one rule: blend in and stay out of it. But that’s hard to do when your trauma gets turned into a bestselling book series. The Slasherville books are a true crime phenomenon, documenting the Wolf Man massacres that changed CJ’s life forever. CJ hates everything about the books and their fans, but at this point she’s just grateful there aren’t any more murders to write about.

Until one day when an unpublished Slasherville book shows up on her doorstep predicting new Wolf Man killings. CJ is sure it’s a bad prank. But then the events in the book start coming true, and when CJ breaks her one rule, the Final Girl-the person who, according to the book, was supposed to stop the Wolf Man-ends up dead. Suddenly, blending in and staying out of it is not an option, and CJ will have to use everything she knows about the rules of horror to make it out alive.

My Review

I’m generally not a huge fan of slasher books, but I enjoyed You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight (Kalynn Bayron… is there anything she can’t write?!?!) and the description of turning tropes on their heads had me intrigued. I’ve also read a couple of middle grade horror novels by Winans, and the first one in particular (The Otherwoods) is still a favorite. So with all that in mind, I wanted to check out this book.

One thing How to Survive a Slasher does well is acknowledge the slasher story tropes right out of the gate. It adds to the fun and genre-celebrating element of the book and relieves whatever tension might gather between readers and their willingness to suspend disbelief. It also made it feel like readers and characters were in on some of the same jokes, which was fun. There’s a line in the book that’s something like, “We’re not all characters in books!” Which was funny, too.

I like CJ as a character and found it easy to root for her throughout the story. CJ identifies as genderqueer and explains what that means to her, which I thought was cool. It’s nice to see characters represented in fiction that explore different ways to identify. CJ also discusses what her identity means to her and how it feels to try to describe her identity to others.

The story moves quickly, and at less than 300 pages, it’s a pretty quick read. If you’re a fan of the slasher tropes, or just want to read something that walks the line between celebrating them and poking fun at them, I think you’ll have fun with this book.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 15 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity throughout.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
Characters have some discussions about spirituality in a more general sense. One character is an atheist. Others talk about the parallel between life and stories and whether we have assigned roles to play or are in charge of our own fates. Some characters act in service to a higher power, while others spurn that idea.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Brief graphic violence. Scenes show murders and accidental death.

Drug Content
In one scene, a teenager wishes for alcohol but doesn’t drink any.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Book Review and Content, Historical, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin
Puffin
Published June 1, 1997 (Orig. 1978)

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About The Westing Game

A Newbery Medal Winner

“A supersharp mystery…confoundingly clever, and very funny.” —Booklist, starred review

A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, one thing’s for sure: Sam Westing may be dead…but that won’t stop him from playing one last game!

Winner of the Newbery Medal
Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award
An ALA Notable Book
“Great fun for those who enjoy illusion, word play, or sleight of hand.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating medley of word games, disguises, multiple aliases, and subterfuges—a demanding but rewarding book.” —The Horn Book

My Review

I’ve seen this book on must-read YA lists for a long time, so when I spotted it recently on a sale table at a bookstore, I decided to pick up a copy.

It seems like a convention-setting story. As I read the book, it reframed some of my thoughts about similar stories published more recently. It didn’t detract from anything, but maybe just gave me more context in the genre of game mysteries in the young adult market.

Since it was originally written in 1978, the story contains some of the dated language that we’ve since acknowledged is harmful, particularly to Chinese Americans and disabled people. There are also some references to a character who died by suicide before the story begins that reflect the understanding of mental health more typical of the time the story takes place.

The Westing Game also has a lot of named characters. It involves sixteen people and a few peripheral characters. They’re introduced rapidly at the beginning of the story, as the setup for the game begins almost immediately. I tend to struggle with books that have a ton of named characters, especially when they’re introduced all at once, so this definitely posed a challenge for me.

The narrative moves from an omniscient perspective to a close third-person point of view, highlighting different characters’ motives, thoughts, and responses to various events in the text. The author does a great job differentiating one character’s voice from another, which helped me keep the characters straight once I got deeper into the story.

I liked the mechanism of partners and clues within each round. I also liked getting to see how each team approached the game, who was messing with the other players behind the scenes, and why. There was a lot going on, and the pieces all fit together nicely. It reminded me a little bit of the show Who Is the Mole? on Netflix, but with an added mystery to solve.

Content Notes for The Westing Game

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
The Hoo family is Chinese. One character is a wheelchair user with an unspecified disability. Another pretends to need crutches for attention.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
One character uses words and language condemned as bigoted by another character. (It is.) Some ableist descriptions of the boy who uses a wheelchair. Some racist descriptions of or references to the Chinese family. There are also some harmful stereotypes repeated within the text.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to marriage.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Several references to a character who died by suicide. A child encounters a lifeless body.

Drug Content
A married couple goes to a cafe and returns drunk.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. All opinions are my own.

Review: Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis

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Thieves’ Gambit
Kayvion Lewis
Nancy Paulsen Books
Published September 26, 2023

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About Thieves’ Gambit

The Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s Eleven in this cinematic heist thriller where a cutthroat competition brings together the world’s best thieves and one thief is playing for the highest stakes of all: her mother’s life.

At only seventeen years old, Ross Quest is already a master thief, especially adept at escape plans. Until her plan to run away from her legendary family of thieves takes an unexpected turn, leaving her mother’s life hanging in the balance.

In a desperate bid, she enters the Thieves’ Gambit, a series of dangerous, international heists where killing the competition isn’t exactly off limits, but the grand prize is a wish for anything in the world–a wish that could save her mom. When she learns two of her competitors include her childhood nemesis and a handsome, smooth-talking guy who might also want to steal her heart, winning the Gambit becomes trickier than she imagined.

Ross tries her best to stick to the family creed: trust no one whose last name isn’t Quest. But with the stakes this high, Ross will have to decide who to con and who to trust before time runs out. After all, only one of them can win.

My Review

This book deserves more buzz than it got. The beginning started a little slow, and I kept forgetting it was young adult because Ross seemed so young. Though the seventeen-year-old lives this wild, heist-filled life, she is really young because she is so secluded from others. As I got to know her more as a character, that young-sounding voice made a lot of sense.

By the time she enters the Gambit, she already sounds older than the girl in the opening pages. As she reaches the final phase of the game, she sounds older still. I’m pretty impressed with the author’s ability to seamlessly shift the writing with Ross’s maturity while the story careens around hairpin turns with the stakes climbing all the time.

I also really liked the characters, especially the team Ross works with during the middle of the book: Kyung-soon, Mylo, and Devroe. They each add something different to the team, and the experience of working with them changes Ross in ways she wasn’t prepared for. I loved that.

I think readers looking for an Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s 11 story will not be disappointed in this wild ride of a tale. I’m eager to read the sequel.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Ross is Bahamian and Black. The other players in the Gambit are a diverse, inclusive group.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Swearing scattered throughout. No F-bombs.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Ross works as a thief, stealing items for clients who’ve hired her and her mom. She enters a high-stakes game in which she must race against other players to steal things. One character gets shot. Another threatens people with a firearm. The plot involves kidnapping and ransom.

Drug Content
Some characters use a drug to make people too intoxicated to perform specific assigned tasks. A character pours a glass of champagne for another.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Other Lola by Ripley Jones

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The Other Lola (Missing Clarissa #2)
Ripley Jones
Wednesday Books
Published March 12, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Other Lola

The sequel to Ripley Jones’s unforgettable YA thriller MISSING CLARISSA, THE OTHER LOLA is about what happens when the people you love the most are the people you can trust the least.

In the months after Cam and Blair broke their small hometown’s legendary missing-girl story and catapulted to accidental fame, they vowed never to do it again. No more mysteries, no more podcasts, and no more sticking their heads where they don’t belong.

Until Mattie Brosillard, a freshman at their high school, shows up on their doorstep, begging Cam and Blair for help. Mattie’s sister Lola disappeared mysteriously five years ago. No trace of her was ever found. Now, she’s back–but Mattie is convinced the girl who returned is an impostor. Nobody believes Mattie’s wild story–not Mattie’s brother, not Mattie’s mother, and not even Cam and Blair. But something is definitely wrong in the Brosillard family. And Blair has her own reasons for wanting to know what really happened to Lola while she was gone.

With Cam and Blair still struggling with the aftermath of their first mystery—and with new secrets swirling between them—the stakes are higher than ever in this can’t-miss sequel to MISSING CLARISSA.

My Review

I really appreciated how the author acknowledges the trauma that Cam and Blair’s experiences in the first book caused for them. Cam has night terrors and panic attacks and is not sure what to do about them. Blair has her own fears and feels a lot of pressure to use those experiences for something.

When they encounter a new possible mystery, Blair is eager and excited. Cam is scared and feels like getting involved is a terrible idea. That struck me as so realistic. These are teenage girls with no special training for these situations. It makes sense that they would have really different feelings and unprocessed trauma.

The story includes both Cam and Blair’s perspectives, but it also adds some journal entries from Lola’s journal and a few scenes that follow Mattie. I liked the way that contributed to the feeling of putting the pieces of a mystery together.

The pacing of the story kept me reading. New things kept happening, and I really wanted to know what happened to Lola. I had a theory early on that turned out to be pretty close to the truth, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the ride as Cam and Blair figured out what happened and faced down the people responsible. I think it was more of a lucky guess than anything.

All in all, this was a tense, fun read. I hope there are more Cam and Blair mysteries to come.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Cam is dating another girl and is neurodivergent. Mattie is nonbinary.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A few F-bombs and a sprinkling of other swear words.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to sex. Kissing between two girls and references to sex.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. References to someone pointing a gun at others.

Drug Content
References to drug use that happened off-scene.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THE OTHER LOLA in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.

Review: In Want of a Suspect by Tirzah Price

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In Want of a Suspect (A Lizzie and Darcy Mystery #1)
Tirzah Price
HarperTeen
Published November 12, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About In Want of a Suspect

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that London’s first female solicitor in possession of the details of a deadly crime, must be in want of a suspect.

The tenacious Lizzie Bennet has earned her place at Longbourn, her father’s law firm. Her work keeps her busy, but luckily she often has help from (and steals occasional kisses with) Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a stern but secretly soft-hearted solicitor at Pemberley.

Lizzie is hired to investigate a deadly warehouse fire, and to find the mysterious woman who was spotted at the scene moments before the flames took hold. But when the case leads her to the sitting room of a woman Darcy once proposed marriage to, the delicate balance between personal and professional in their relationship is threatened.

Questions of the future are cast aside when the prime suspect is murdered and Lizzie’s own life is threatened. As the body count rises, and their suspicions about what was really going on in the warehouse grow, the pressure is on for Lizzie and Darcy to uncover the truth.

Lizzie and Darcy are back for more suspense, danger, and romance in this first in a duology spinoff of the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries!

My Review

It turns out that a cozy mystery was a great pick for me to read this month. I enjoyed the early 19th-century London setting and the investigatory prowess of Lizzie and Darcy. The murder mystery had just the right number of twists and turns for me.

Also– if you asked me before I read this book whether I needed a book in my life in which multiple heroines of Jane Austen novels appeared, I probably wouldn’t have had an answer. Now, I realize it’s something I absolutely needed in my life. My favorite scenes from the book were the ones in which characters from other Austen novels appeared. Lizzie, Elinor, and Marianne solving a mystery together?! YES!! With my whole heart, yes.

As with Pride and Premeditation, I struggled when the two main characters did something that seemed decidedly different than something either would do in the original story. Once I invested in this mystery enough to imagine these as different versions of Lizzie and Darcy (more a multiverse representation than a reimagining, if that makes sense?) then I deeply enjoyed my reading of the book.

If you like a good, cozy mystery set in London during the Napoleonic Wars (I love that Price included this detail), I recommend this one. If you’re new to Tirzah Price’s reimaginings of Jane Austen novels, Sense and Second-degree Murder is my favorite.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Lizzie and Darcy are white. The story delves into prejudice against the French, with whom England is at war during the story. There is some xenophobia and anti-French comments and behavior.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to murder. Lizzie and Darcy see a warehouse on fire from a distance and learn that someone perished in the blaze. They see the body of a murdered woman in a park.

Drug Content
References to alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

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Firekeeper’s Daughter
Angeline Boulley
Henry Holt & Co.
Published March 16, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Firekeeper’s Daughter

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in—both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When her family is struck by tragedy, Daunis puts her dreams on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother’s hockey team.

After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. How far will she go to protect her community if it means tearing apart the only world she’s ever known?

My Review

Firekeeper’s Daughter has been on my reading list since the book came out in 2021. I read Warrior Girl, Unearthed in 2023, which has some of the same characters in it. There are also a few spoilers for this book, so I was prepared for a couple of the things that happened, but I still found the story and Daunis as a narrator especially compelling.

The story follows relationships between Daunis and her friends, family, and community members. These relationships add so much richness to the story. Daunis has connections to elders who share wisdom about tribal life and values. She meets a handsome hockey player who makes her question her views about relationships and whether guys can be trusted.

Her love for her community drives her forward, and that love comes through in every move she makes, even in her most conflicted moments. She has strong relationships with several women. Some of these help her when she needs them. Others need her help.

The story explores how law enforcement can neglect or harm tribal communities, especially Indigenous women. One of the things Daunis wrestles with is whether her role in the criminal investigation will help or hurt her community. She’s determined to make sure she helps, but so many pieces of the investigation stand outside her control.

Conclusion

Firekeeper’s Daughter created a lot of buzz the year it came out, and justifiably so. The story had me completely captivated and pulled me into the heart of an Indigenous community grieving over the loss of young lives and the people working hard to understand why it happened. It’s a powerful story with a lot of suspense and a bit of romance.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Daunis is biracial. Her mom is white, and her dad is Ojibwe. Most major characters are indigenous.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Some F-bombs and other profanity used fairly frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to sex. At one point, a boy and girl have sex– only sparse details are included. Someone prepares to assault a girl. The assault is implied and not described, but it’s referenced later. A boy kisses a girl without consent. A boy makes a sexual comment about a girl. Someone brags about sexual exploits.

Spiritual Content
References to prayer and tribal practices such as making offerings at river crossings. References to tribal teachings, stories, and medicines.

Violent Content
Someone attacks a girl. A boy punches another boy after he makes a sexual comment about her. References to a fatal car accident. A girl punches a boy in the face. Someone drugs a girl. A girl finds the body of a missing person. A group kidnaps two people and threatens them. Someone causes a car accident.

Drug Content
References to alcohol and drug addiction. References to creating methamphetamine and distributing it. Someone gives Daunis a beer at a party.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.