Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends.

A sudden, nail-biting ending leaves the door open for the next installment of this duology.Ī dark, Poe-inspired thriller that lives up to the gothic master. And in the true spirit of Poe, a black cat, in this case a panther from the zoo, adds another level of creepiness with intermittent free-verse poems told from its perspective. The narrative’s changing timeline, as each girl remembers events from the past, answers questions and raises intrigue in equal measure their experiences are gritty reflections of teen life. When Tress, bent on truth and revenge, sets up an interrogation of Felicity reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” the story accelerates evenly with shorter, taut chapters delivering the final shocks. Told in alternating chapters from each girl’s perspective, this thriller starts off as a slow burn with longer chapters establishing their personalities the nature of the closed-minded, predominantly White town and the mysterious disappearance. The one person who may know what happened is Felicity Turnado, who not only used to be best friends with Tress, but was the last one to see her parents alive.

Now living with her negligent grandfather at his questionable exotic animal attraction, the high school senior has become a pariah among her classmates. In small-town Amontillado, Tress Montor had a seemingly normal life until her parents disappeared. Tress would kill to find out why her parents disappeared.

The initial insult