YA Mystery
DIAL EM FOR MURDER by Marni Bates
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Emmy has been spending countless hours at Starbucks trying to write a romance novel. It isn’t going well. All of her dialogue seems stilted and the high- stakes plot isn’t at all believable. But when a stranger tackles her to the ground and dies on top of her, Emmy is thrust into an unbelievable thriller of her own. It seems like the old man may have taken a bullet that was meant for her, and before he died, he slipped a password-protected tablet into her pocket. The police seem ready to put her into “protective custody” when the dead man’s grandson (and inconveniently Emmy’s best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s best friend), Sebastian, shows up with a clandestine alternative: enroll in an extremely expensive and extremely well – guarded private school. Sebastian seems to have his own secret motives for wanting Emmy close, but Emmy knows that this might be her only chance to break into the tablet and achieve her own secret agenda. The old man mentioned her father, and Emmy is determined to find him.
This thriller kept me engaged from start to finish. I won’t call it a mystery since there weren’t really clues that the reader could unravel, but it is certainly mysterious. I’m still on the edge of my seat wanting to figure out what’s going on. Too bad I have to wait for a sequel! Highly recommend it to teens who enjoy thrillers.
If you liked Dial Em for Murder, you might like The Name of the Star.
ALL FALL DOWN by Ally Carter
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Everyone thinks Grace is crazy, but she’s not. She saw the scar-faced man shoot her mother. She knows the fire wasn’t an accident. But the lack of a bullet wound in the coroner’s report and the lack of evidence on security cameras led to years of shrinks and being shuffled from school to school. Now she’s been sent to Adria to live with her grandfather the ambassador who hasn’t seen her since her mother’s death. After so long away, Adria is both familiar and foreign, and reminders of her mother are everywhere. But when Grace stumbles into a secret meeting in the abandoned Iranian embassy, she recognizes the scar-faced man instantly. Dismissed by her grandfather as fatigued and confused, Grace must seek the help of new friends and friends from her childhood to navigate the hidden tunnels of Embassy Row and find her mother’s killer before he kills again.
This fast-paced, suspenseful mystery features a spirited and mischievous heroine and a cast of colorful supporting characters. The gradual revelation of clues and an unreliable narrator make the ending difficult to guess but allow the reader to remain constantly involved in puzzling out the mystery. A thrilling start to what promises to be a compelling series! This book will likely appeal to mystery/thriller loving teens of a variety of ages.
THE NAME OF THE STAR by Maureen Johnson
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After growing up in a small town in southern Louisiana, Rory is excited to spend her senior year of high school studying abroad in London. It is a big change—living in a new culture with a strange academic system and attending a boarding school where you are stuck living with everyone in your class, whether you like them or not. But Rory gradually finds good friends in Jazza and Jerome, and her life settles into a comfortable rhythm. That is, until Jack the Ripper shows up. The murders occur on the anniversaries of Jack the Ripper’s infamous attacks, and they mimic his style exactly. But no one can see the murderer—not even on camera—except Rory. Now her life is turned upside down as she has to figure out who the Ripper is, how she can see him, and most importantly, whether she and her friends are in danger.
What begins as a simple, realistic fiction about girls at boarding school ends a suspenseful supernatural thriller. Starting about halfway through, I couldn’t put it down! As usual, Maureen Johnson was spot on in her portrayal of teen relationship angst and dorm-life drama. And her descriptions of Rory’s life in England took me back to my days of studying abroad in the UK. This book was right up my alley—a fast-paced, character driven, fantasy-but-almost-sci-fi murder mystery. I highly recommend it to teens who enjoy books in any of these genres!
THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin
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Sixteen seemingly unconnected people are invited to live in Sunset Towers, a strange apartment building with the West wall made solely of window glass, looking out toward the beautiful sunsets and millionaire Samuel Westing’s old mansion. But when several of the children sneak into the Westing house on a dare and discover the millionaire’s dead body, the sixteen strangers learn that they are not unconnected after all. They are all named as heirs in Samuel Westing’s will. The will itself, however, is unconventional to say the least. It claims that Samuel Westing was murdered by someone in Sunset Towers and challenges the heirs to find the murderer in order to inherit the $200 million fortune that Westing left behind. The heirs divide into eight teams, and each team receives a different clue. Now the race is on to discover who killed Samuel Westing and nab the $200 million before the mysterious killer strikes again.
Anyone who enjoys the Thirty-Nine Clues series should check out this 1979 Newbery Award winner. Although similar in plot, however, the style could not be more different. Sixteen eccentric characters compete in a bizarre and confusing game that will keep the reader as invested as the characters in puzzling it out. Ultimately, however, the point of the story is not the murder mystery but the development of the characters individually and as a community.
If you liked The Westing Game, try The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. If you enjoyed the somewhat eccentric characters, you may also enjoy A Wrinkle in Time and Saffy’s Angel.
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN by Ransom Riggs
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When Jacob was a young child, he believed his grandfather’s stories about growing up in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and fighting monsters. He believed that the photographs of the flying girl, the invisible boy, and his grandfather’s other peculiar playmates were all real. By age 16, however, Jacob has grown to understand that the photographs are fake and his grandfather’s stories merely fantasies invented to mask the horrible reality of growing up in Poland and being hunted by human monsters, the Nazis. But when Jacob finds his grandfather dead in the woods, he has to admit that either he is going crazy or the tentacled creature he saw slithering away from his grandfather’s bleeding body was no fairytale. Finding a letter from Miss Peregrine in his grandfather’s study, Jacob travels to England in search of the Home for Peculiar Children, all too aware that if Miss Peregrine is real, the monsters must be real too.
I absolutely loved this book. From its beginnings playing with the blurred lines between true horrors and fantastical horrors to the full-fledged fantasy of Miss Peregrine and her wards and through all of the photographs in between, the book was fascinating and fast paced. I couldn’t put it down. Unfortunately, the ending was not as strong as the beginning and middle. It was clumsy and poorly timed, and instead of providing the cliff-hanger incentive to read a sequel that the author intended, it just seemed awkward and dissatisfying. If only he had ended it about a page earlier! But I hope that the poor ending will be remedied by the sequel that is promised for 2013. For that reason, I will give this book a strange recommendation: I highly recommend reading it, but if you are picky about endings like I am, you may want to wait to read it until the sequel is released to avoid an awkward interruption in the action.
POWERLESS by Matthew Cody
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When Daniel and his family move to a new town to take care of his aging grandmother, Daniel immediately notices something odd about the kids of Noble’s Green. At first he excuses the strange things he sees as tricks of his mind. Mollie couldn’t possibly move as fast as he thought she did. Certainly the bully Clay couldn’t be strong enough to hurl him that far through the air. But when Eric rescues him from a would-be-fatal fall and flies him up to their secret hide-out, Daniel has to face the truth. The kids of Noble’s Green have superpowers. Most of them choose to use their powers only for good and to hide their abilities from the adults. But one thing is universally true: the powers disappear on your thirteenth birthday. Your old talents vanish, and with them your memories of your childhood adventures and even of your friendships. Some of the kids have accepted this change as destiny, and watched their older friends drift away from them, knowing it would one day be their turn. But Mollie suspects that something else might be going on. Unfortunately, any kid who tried to figure out the truth in the past lost their powers prematurely. But Daniel has no superpowers, and his talent at detective work makes him the perfect man for the job. It is all up to Daniel to discover who or what is stealing the superpowers of Noble’s Green, before the supers lose another friend.
I just picked this book up when I was browsing, and boy am I glad I did! This is a great adventure mystery, built on themes of growing up and changing relationships that we can all relate to. It will probably appeal most to upper elementary and middle schoolers. A truly fun, imaginative read–I highly recommend it!
If you liked Powerless, you might like Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferraiolo.
FOUND by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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The letter only had six words, and though they didn’t mean anything to Jonah, he found them somehow disturbing: “You are one of the missing.” When he learns that his friend Chip received the same letter, they realize that something strange is definitely going on. As more mysterious letters arrive, the two friends and Jonah’s sister, Katherine, begin to investigate the situation, which seems to have some connection to the FBI, and the fact that Jonah was adopted. But if things weren’t strange enough, level-headed Katherine claims she’s seen a ghost, and Jonah may have seen a mysterious intruder vanish from his bedroom. As matters get increasingly complicated, the teens begin to suspect that they are caught up in something much bigger than they realized, and perhaps beyond anything they ever imagined to see in this world.
Found is a suspenseful sci-fi mystery that starts off Haddix’s “The Missing” series. It is followed by Sent and Sabotaged, and four more books are likely to join the series in the coming years. It’s a fast, fun read for teens!
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