When Carly died, no one lost more than Neily and Audrey.

Carly was Audrey's cousin. Her best friend. Her dad was convicted of the murder, but Audrey knows there's no way he did it. Now she's determined to find out the truth.

Neily is the one who found Carly's body. She was his ex-girlfriend. The one who broke his heart and publicly humiliated him, but the one he couldn't get over. He feels guilty that he didn't answer his phone the night before her death and can't let himself off the hook for not helping when he could have.

Neily and Audrey are NOT friends. But Audrey needs Neily's help to prove that her dad is innocent... and Neily agrees to help because he can't get Carly out of his head. So a year after Carly's death, these two begin an investigation into the behind-the-scenes at their exclusive school.


My Thoughts:
I've been reading more YA Mysteries than usual. I guess I've just been in that kind of mood. This book was everything that you would want in a mystery. It was suspenseful, entertaining, and had me completely addicted. The kids in this book are for the most part privileged... but that doesn't stop them from getting into some pretty dark stuff. After Carly loses her mother she trades in her loving boyfriend Neily, for the popular drug dealing Adam. She drops out of the special honors program and she starts keeping secrets, even from Audrey, the one who brought her into the popular crowd. The evidence against Audrey's dad for murder seems open-and-shut... but the cops don't know the inner workings of the popular kids the way Audrey does.

Neily has always hated the crowd that Carly and Audrey got mixed up in. He never had time for people that were so caught up in themselves. So he would like nothing better to bring down the guy who stole Carly from him. The guy who took a sad girl who had just lost her mother, and changed her completely.

I liked that the book was told in alternating perspectives... but I think I would have been just as happy if it was narrated by only Neily. He was the character that got my attention. He was almost too smart, but also completely damaged inside from Carly's betrayal and death. I really liked reading about his pain and insights.

So if you're reading this and you like a whodunit mystery, you should definitely read this! It kept me guessing until right before the end. I did figure out who did a few pages before it was revealed... but couldn't figure out why. Actually I'm still a little foggy on why.

OVERALL: A true YA Mystery that will keep you guessing and also pull at your heartstrings. It has the emotion of 2 people who have lost someone so important to them and you have this mystery that begs to be solved. A book you could read in a day for sure!

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CW: Drugging and rape of a girl. Drug use.

3.5 Stars ( )

dnf-ed at about 2/3 because wow I just do not care about anyone in this book. the writing is very stilted and awkward, there are constant time jumps that are very convoluted, and the voices of our two protagonists are very similar and difficult to distinguish from one another ( )

Carly was a sweet girl with a wonderful personality. She was pretty and popular; vivacious and funny. She was as smart as a whip and knew everything about the privileged student body of the Brighton Day School. As much as he still loves her, it's disturbing for Neily to see how much his girlfriend has changed: she has begun running with a much faster crowd, and become extremely self-destructive.

When she suddenly dumps him for a notorious bad boy, Neily is devastated. Bewildered and angered by Carly's strange behavior, he steadfastly doesn't answer the phone whenever she calls. However, what initially seems like a typical teenage reaction to a difficult breakup, becomes tinged with sadness and regret after Carly is murdered. Neily is ultimately wracked with grief and guilt for his own stubbornness.

If he had answered the call she had made before she died, he may have been able to help her. Now, he can't get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind. Desperately hoping to assuage some of the guilt he feels about her death, Neily reluctantly teams up with Carly's cousin Audrey to find her killer. After all, it is the last thing they can do to honor her memory.

Audrey is dealing with her own regrets over her cousin's death. She was the reason Carly got tangled up with Brighton's fast crowd in the first place, and she will have to live with the consequences of that decision on her conscience for the rest of her life. Because Audrey is convinced of two things about Carly's death: someone at Brighton is obviously a murderer, and the police have put the wrong person in jail. So, she turns to Neily for help in finding Carly's killer.

As Neily and Audrey begin to investigate their shared history with Carly, her dealings with Brighton's seedier elements come to light. For the amateur sleuths, these are shocking revelations that lead them to wonder if Carly actually knew something that could have gotten her killed. However, figuring out how Carly and her killer fit together into the twisted drama of Brighton's secretive world will force the reluctant allies to face some harsh truths about themselves and the girl they couldn't save.

To be perfectly honest, I found some of the pettiness between the characters to be slightly annoying. Having said that, I still enjoyed reading the book. I would give this book a definite A! ( )

This book was slow in places but ultimately it held my interest. I think that I would have invested more of myself into this story if I'd had even an ounce of sympathy for Carly. She was, however, completely unlikable so in the end I didn't much care who killed her. ( )