Book recommendations

Two can keep a secret ... if one is dead

Since I read the English version of this book, I thought it might be fun to also write the review in English. I am not certain whether there even is a German translation yet but maybe you know the author Karen M. McManus from her last book "One of us is lying". The setting is similar to the previous one, it also evolves around a murder mystery at a High-School. Though that doesn't mean that it is any less thrilling or nerve-wracking, in fact, I think it's even more spooky because the characters as well as their thoughts are much more relatable.

The mystery is explained through two points of views, switching after every chapter. The first one is told from the perspective of Ellery, a girl who is forced to return to her mother's home town along with her twin Ezra. Ellery is obsessed with true-crime books, mainly because her aunt - her mother's twin - disappeared from that exact town when she was only eighteen years old. Sadly, history repeats itself. Five years before the story starts, another girl went missing at the same age. And again, a few weeks after the twins arrive. Ellery is desperate for answers, from the past and the present. She starts looking for them in the wrong places, which leads to several wrong connections. The other main character is Malcolm. He has the unfortunate faith of living in said town for his entire life and of being the brother of the main suspect for the investigations regarding the second disappearing girl. It also doesn't help that he was the last one who saw the third girl alive. Between bad timing, misleading coincidences and mistrust, everyone creates their own theory for each of those incidents, while looking for the ones who actually know what happened. And since vanished girls can't talk, the hunt for potential suspects begins.

At the beginning I was worried that random High-School-drama will take up more pages than the actual crimes. Luckily, that doesn't happen at all, on the contrary, it is so well-written and thought through that at some point the reader suspects everyone and just when you think you got it, it slips away again. At the end it's also amazing to see which parts are weirdly connected and which ones have completely different motives, although they seem to fit together perfectly. I also liked that there isn't just the one main bad guy (or girl), there are so many stories and strings attached, it will surprise you. However, in the beginning it might be a good idea to take notes - at least mentally - because it's hard to keep up with all the names and relationships when one only knows so little about the big picture and how the past influences the current events. I think that this is the perfect murder mystery book if you don't really like murder mysteries because it leaves out gross details and it just feels like solving a quite impossible riddle. There are some unexpected plot twists that will make you throw the book against a wall - violently - and some secrets which the reader can uncover before the characters do if you read it actively.