The One That Got Away with Murder

In Lundy’s classic-feeling debut, enigmatic new girl Lauren O’Brian is starting senior year at Valley High in Happy Valley, Pa., after moving from California. Determined to start over and make good, she admits to having screwed up her life and insists that her past should stay in the past. She’s made scores of new friends and solidified her place on the soccer team when she finds out that her casual hookup partner, Robbie Crestmont, is rumored to have murdered his former girlfriend. What’s more, Robbie’s younger brother Trevor is also thought to have killed his girlfriend. But the Crestmonts are wealthy, and their father is the most powerful person in town, so neither boy has ever been charged. Lauren decides she must solve the girls’ murders and, in doing so, her own mysterious past slowly comes to light. While many of the characters’ morally gray personalities dampen the surprise of the killer’s reveal, Lundy effectively employs all the hallmarks of a successful mystery thriller to spin a suspenseful yarn with a feminist bent. Most major characters are white. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)