Story of a boy who tricks a girl into a crime. ( )

Fifteen-year-old Miranda Allerdon and her older sister, Lander, are spending another summer at their parents' idyllic cottage on the Connecticut River. Miranda lazes about with the neighborhood kids while Lander focuses intensely on her medical studies, essentially ignoring her younger sister. After the Allerdons and their neighbors witness a frightening boating accident, Lander begins dating one of the men involved in the accident—a man Miranda thinks is dangerous. Unfortunately, the sisters have never been close, and Lander refuses to consider Miranda’s warnings. Then Lander is arrested for murder, and the Allerdons scramble to help their eldest daughter. Only Miranda manages to think clearly as she circumvents the police in an effort to clear her sister’s name.

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A murder mystery in a small town raises suspicions when a member of a well-regarded family in the community is implicated. ( )

Interesting plotting. Only eleven chapters, alternating between two sisters' points of view in each and every chapter. The story opens with the twenty-two-year-old sister, Lander, as she is being taken in by the police for questioning about a murder. Her fingerprints are on the gun believed to be the murder weapon after Lander had gone target shooting (a first for her) with a young man she knew for only one week, Jason Firenza. It is Jason's male friend, Derry, who has been shot dead. But then, when the police try to locate the mysterious Jason Firenza, they find no such person. Fifteen-year-old sister, Miranda, suspects that Jason deals drugs and set up her sister. And Lander, a future-medical-student, doesn't do drugs. All this takes place on the Connecticut River, where the two sisters' family owns a summer cottage. Told in present-tense, the plot moves along with a tone of immediacy, keeps the reader in suspense, and is well-supported by secondary characters. Since facts and clues are revealed ever so slowly by way of questions and the private thoughts of the two sisters, it's an absorbing whodunit, especially for readers who also like to get inside characters' heads. ( )