I received this book for a gift and it was recommended by someone working at Barnes and Noble. This is the first book in a 3 book series by Holly Jackson.
The book begins with high school student Pippa Fitz-Amobi and her Senior Capstone Project. She is interested in Journalism and decides to research the 2014 Missing Persons Investigation of Andie Bell in Fairview, CT. Andie Bell was a popular senior when she went missing 5 years ago. Andie Bell's boyfriend Sal Singh was the main suspect and was found dead in the woods after the disappearance. The police determined that Sal murdered his girlfriend and the grief caused him to take his own life. Pippa believes that Sal is innocent and with interviews and police records, she wants to prove it.
Pippa starts with interviewing Ravi Singh who is Sal's younger brother. Ravi has always thought the death of his brother never made sense. Sal was smart, caring, and happy. Ravi starts to help Pippa throughout the book with her research. Pippa makes a map of the day that Andie goes missing along with the whereabouts of Sal and security camera footage of Andie's car. It doesn't make sense for Sal to have time to murder Andie and then be back home at 12:50am. Pippa starts to interview anyone who knew Andie: her friends, sister, teachers, and Sal's friends. Something is very obvious: Andie had a lot of dark secrets. Many of those around her say that she was "persuasive" and "they didn't like the person they were when they were with her." As Pippa continues to investigate, she discovers that Andie had been seeing an older man and was dealing drugs at parties. Sal didn't know any of these things as Andie had secret codes for meetings and contacts.
Pippa keeps an ongoing list of suspects that we see her interview and work through details while gathering new clues that not even the police found out about. Pippa starts to receive threatening notes at school and at home that tell her to stop looking into Andie Bell's case. Pippa keeps this to herself, but when her beloved dog is found dead, she starts to panic. She is ready to call the whole thing off when Ravi convinces her to not give up and they will continue on together. Ravi just wants to clear his brothers name.
Overall this book was filled with twists and turns as we try to solve this mystery alongside Pippa. I like the writing style of this book and how Jackson would switch to interview format and include maps and Andie's planner pages. Pippa definitely breaks many rules as she tries to uncover the truth and it puts herself and her family in danger. I was thinking that there would be a romance storyline between Pippa and Ravi since they became very close during their research, but the book made it seem as though they were just friends. Maybe something will develop in the other 2 books? This is not my usual type of genre that I normally read, but I enjoyed this thriller and would check out the other 2 books in the series. I think that those who like to watch crime documentaries or listen to crime podcasts would enjoy this book.
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