Opening Line:  “Pippa knew where they lived.  Everyone in Fairview knew where they lived.”

Overall:  Pippa Fitz-Amobi is a smart, organized, overachieving girl who decides to do her Senior Project on two murders that devastated her small town 5 years ago.  A beautiful, popular, High School girl named Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend Sal Singh.  Everybody knows he did it because right after sending a text confessing to the murder, he then killed himself.  So after that happened, the case was closed.  Pippa decides to investigate this cold case and asks Sal’s ostracized younger brother to  help her.  They work well together and start to discover things that may prove Sal to be innocent of the murder after all.  Things are not what they seemed to be, and Pip finds out secret after revealing secret about the people in her town that were associated with both Andie and Sal.  As Pip’s “murder board” gets more tangled, and her “person of interest” list keeps growing, the stakes get higher.  Some people involved in the crime are starting to get nervous, and Pip starts getting notes threatening her to stop investigating.  But, now that’s she’s in so deep, and is so close to finding out what really happened with Andie and Sal, she can’t give up, no matter what the price.

Ovations:  First off, the two main characters in the book are very likeable.  You are really rooting for Sal and Pippa.  Pippa is intelligent, spunky, strong, caring, and courageous.  Sal is sweet, kind, funny, smart, friendly, supportive, devoted to helping Pippa, and determined to clear his brother’s name.  This book was a very interesting, enjoyable, engaging murder mystery and thriller.  It was fast paced, suspenseful, and really kept you interested the whole way through.  I loved how the author structured the book in that you got to find out the clues right along with Pippa and Sal and try to figure out the case with them.  I loved how you could see Pip’s Senior Project as she worked on it, and how exactly she was keeping track of all of the information they were getting.  The plot’s mystery made sense and there were no holes.  (Very important to me when reading a mystery!)  I could not guess the killer(s) at all while reading the book and I did not know how it was going to end.

Oh Well:  The only negative things that I can think of to say is that Pippa does conveniently get a lot of people to talk to her, and uncovers things that the Police have apparently overlooked.  But, improbable things like that happen in lots of murder mystery books.  If the Police solved every case correctly, what would all the detectives in books do with their lives? lol  

Opinion:  If you are not used to reading YA books as an adult, do not let that deter you from reading this one!  This is such a good book!  I stayed up way too late every night while I was reading this book because I did not want to stop reading to go to bed!  This is an exciting, clever, murder mystery and thriller with lots of twists and turns.  It is hard to believe that this is author Holly Jackson’s debut novel!  I did not know it when I bought this book , but there are two more books in this series now after this one.  But, don’t worry, this book has a complete ending and is not a cliff-hanger.  The next book starts off from where this one ends, but is a new mystery.  I can’t wait to read and review the next two books!  This first one is highly recommended.  Rating 10 out of 10