The Last One to Fall

Savana Caruso receives a text in the middle of the night from someone pretending to be her childhood friend Jesse Melo in an absorbing murder mystery by Lepore (This Is Why We Lie). Summoned to a remote warehouse that local teens use as a party spot, Savana never imagines that her clandestine meeting will result in her witnessing a murder. But after someone falls from the building’s fourth floor, the incident sets off a chain of events that seems to stem from thorny relationships between Savana, Jesse, and the rest of their friend group. Savana begins receiving text messages from an unknown source threatening to pin blame for the death on Jesse, and the two teens must work together to uncover the truth before the police close in. The many interconnecting threads—rendered via Savana and Jesse’s dual first-person POVs, which chronicle alternating timelines taking place before and after the crime—never fully fuse into a coherent narrative. Nevertheless, Lepore ambitiously deploys a freshly realized plot via lean prose, and a resolution that admirably sticks the landing rounds out this labyrinthine thrill ride. Characters largely read as white. Ages 13–up. Agent: Ross Whitney, Irene Goodman Literary. (May)