YA Thriller/Suspense
SKINK, NO SURRENDER by Carl Hiaasen
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When Richard’s cousin (and best friend) Malley disappears, a little amateur detective work confirms his worst fear: she has run off with the man she met on the Internet. While the police try to track her down, Richard heads down to their favorite getaway on the beach where he meets a seemingly insane, homeless environmental activist named Skink. It turns out that Skink is the former Governor of Florida, and that he faked his own death years ago, before becoming a vigilante for endangered turtles, among other things. When Richard gets a cryptic phone call from his cousin that seems to indicate that she is in danger, he and Skink take matters into their own hands and travel into the wild waterways of Florida to rescue Malley.
An exciting teen thriller that is difficult to put down, this novel will not disappoint readers who are looking for an engaging plot, well-developed characters, thematic depth, and plenty of surprises. I highly recommend it!
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.
A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON by Samantha Mabry
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Lucas has always been an outsider to San Juan: the rich white developer’s kid who only visits in the summers. But all his life he has soaked up the culture, especially the stories the old women tell about the scientist’s house and the supposed witch-girl who lives there. As Lucas gets older, the stories begin to seem less real. Until the summer that the island girls begin to disappear and everything leads Lucas back to the old house and the mysterious girl shrouded in the trees.
A poetic literary thriller nestled somewhere between realistic and science fiction, this novel gripped me from the start. I actually read it in one sitting, a rare occurrence for me. Mabry immerses readers in a vivid setting of blended reality and folklore as Lucas struggles to define himself, caught between two worlds and a disappointing relationship with his father. One of the best written books I’ve read this year and a stunning debut novel. I highly recommend it!
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.
WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart
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They called themselves the Liars–Cadence, her cousins Mirren and Johnny, and their friend Gat. They had been coming with their families to their grandfather’s private island every summer since forever. Although they didn’t see one another all year long, in the summers they were confidantes, co-conspirators, best friends. But everything changed in summer fifteen when Cadence had her accident. It left her with crippling migraines and took almost all of her memories of that summer and the accident itself. All she remembers is Gat and the beach roses and holding hands under the stars. Since her mother won’t tell her what happened, and the Liars seem to be doing their best to ignore her questions, it is up to Cady to piece together her memories of summer fifteen. What was so horrific the her brain won’t let her remember? How did her relationship with Gat change so much in so short a time? And is there really such a thing as a second chance?
I didn’t figure this book out before the big reveal. I actually ended up reading it twice to find all the clues I missed. This suspenseful novel starts off deceivingly light, but be prepared for an intense read. I’m still thinking about it. I would recommend this book to teens who like heavy realistic fiction.
If you liked We Were Liars, you might like If I Stay by Gayle Forman, The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock, and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.
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!
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.
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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