Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟 Spice: 🌶️

by Katie Cotugno – Many thanks to @prhaudio for a copy of the audiobook of this fun YA mystery. Below is my honest review.

Linden is an athlete at an elite New England boarding school, and in the waning weeks of summer before he returns for his senior year, he travels from his small Boston apartment he shares with his mother to visit his roommate Jasper on Matha’s Vineyard. Jasper’s family lives on a sprawling estate, where Linden, whose mother is the housekeeper for a wealthy Boston family, identifies more with the help. Much to his surprise, he runs into Holiday, his childhood friend and daughter of the family his mother works for. During a week of drinking and debauchery, Linden, Jasper, and others engage in all sorts of excess. In the early morning, after a rowdy party, one of the party attendees is found unconscious in the pool. As he struggles to survive in the hospital, Holiday and Linden search for answers and uncover many dark secrets of the people they thought they knew in this book, which is an homage to Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

If Gossip Girl were a murder mystery, you’d have Liar’s Beach. I live in the area where many of the prep schools mentioned as rivals are located, and I thought the author perfectly captured the absolute excess of some of the families and the self-consciousness of those from “normal” backgrounds who navigate that world. I enjoyed Holiday – she was by far the best thing about the book. I liked how she and Linden navigated their complex relationship. At times, Linden was hard to root for, and his friends were relatively insufferable for most of the book, but the mystery at the story’s core was fun. Holiday served as an excellent Hercule Poirot, and the beauty & excess of Martha’s Vineyard was a great backdrop. I’m looking forward to the second book in the series and seeing how Holiday and Linden evolve in college.

Graham Halstead’s audiobook narration is very well done. It was a quick listen and enhanced the story for me, bringing these unique characters to life.