About the Book
-
Author:
- Rachel Peterson
- Voices:
- Cis Boy
- Cis Girl
- Straight
- White (Non-Specified)
Cover Story: You’re Breaking My Heart
Drinking Buddy: You Wanna Take These Knives Out of My Back?
MPAA Rating: R (violence, sexuality, alcohol use)
Talky Talk: Dum da dum dum (That’s the Dragnet theme)
Bonus Factors: Unreliable Narrator
Bromance Status: Wait, what?
Cover Story: You’re Breaking My Heart
Good, if not overused, cover for a murder mystery. That’s what made me pick it up.
The Deal:
A typical weekend high school party. The keg is tapped, the music is blasting, everyone is having a great time. Until Mason, the artistic weirdo, fatally stabs Sadie Cooper, one of the most popular girls in school. Sadie’s boyfriend, Ben, is forced to kill Mason in self defense. And now the police are interviewing three witnesses: Ben, Sadie’s twin sister Jayne, and Sadie’s best friend, Liz. All of their stories coincide. Kind of. We hear all three of their testimonies, and they’re quick point fingers. Was Ben the perfect boyfriend, or did he have a violent, cheating side? Was Liz a true friend, or was she clingy and jealous? Was Jayne a studious and artistic student, or did she have a dark half?
Drinking Buddy: You Wanna Take These Knives Out of My Back?
Ben, the super cool bad boy. Jayne, too smart for this world. Liz, with an unhappy home life, happy to be accepted into Sadie’s loving (and wealthy) family. None of them could possibly have anything to hide.
But as they’re grilled by the cops, we realize Liz isn’t as loyal as she might seem. Ben is kind of obsessive and stalkery, relying on his important father to bail him out of trouble. And Jayne…what’s the deal with that college boy she’s always texting but isn’t her boyfriend? And did something happen between her and murderer Mason?
Maybe someone isn’t telling the truth. And the only one who knows the truth can no longer talk.
MPAA Rating: R (violence, sexuality, alcohol use)
You know, when I was a teenager, police took you at your word about why you killed a guy (if you were rich and white). But now there’s all kinds of high-ranking muck a mucks trying to knock holes in everyone’s story. And holes there be. I can’t get into it too much without major spoilers. It’s like one of those logic puzzles: If Liz is telling the truth about where she was, then Jayne must be lying, unless Ben is also lying….you get the picture.
But a girl is dead, and well, her parents have money. Wouldn’t it be easier to just blame the weird kid and be done with it?
Talky Talk: Dum da dum dum (That’s the Dragnet theme)
Three points of view. Three weepy teens, brokenhearted about the death of their girlfriend/twin/bestie. According to their testimonies, the other two are lying, creepy, awful people whose evil ways led to Sadie’s death. This book kept me guessing until the end, when we find out what really happened from an unimpeachable fourth character. I think you can guess who.
Bonus Factor: Unreliable Narrator
So…can you enjoy a book when the narrator is lying to you, or at least not saying the whole truth? What if three narrators are messing with us?
Bromance Status: Wait, what?
Twenty pages before the end of book I was thinking there were so many loose ends and tangents that there was no possible way the author could wrap this up in a satisfactory manner. I was wrong.
Literary Matchmaking
Jan Gangsei’s Dead Below Deck also has a murder, an unreliable narrator, and the same cover.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher, but no money nor an invitation to Trevor McClain’s party.
