Half Truths

Scandal, secrets, and the bad behaviors of the rich form the backbone of bestseller Contreras’s juicy if overdramatic romance. College senior Amelia Bastón, a student journalist newly transferred to her affluent father’s alma mater, Ellis University (a fictionalized Cornell), investigates the disappearance of fellow student Lana Ly, which she believes may be related to the mysterious accident that left her brother in a coma. Amelia acquiesces to the romantic attention of her brother’s best friend, hockey player Logan Fitzgerald, despite implications that he was somehow involved in Lana’s vanishing. As Amelia’s investigation, and her relationship with Logan, draw her ever closer to the campus’s sinister secret societies, Contreras’s characterizations of the privileged college students fall into shallow caricature. Though the setting is deliciously glamorous and tense hazing scenes evoke a palpable sense of anxiety, the mystery is haphazard and Amelia’s internal life never quite coalesces on the page. Contreras (The Consequence of Falling) lets readers see pieces of the mystery long before Amelia realizes them herself, undermining her supposed deductive skills. This soapy suspense novel is longer on style than substance. (Self-published)