cover image You’re So Dead

You’re So Dead

Ash Parsons. Philomel, $18.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-593-20512-9

Alabama teen Plum Winter, who’s queer and white, can’t bear to spend spring break home alone, so when a courier delivers a voucher for travel to the inaugural Pyre Festival, she believes it’s a sign. The invitation is undoubtedly for her half sister, Peach, an influencer who just moved to Los Angeles. Plum knows she’ll never miss it, though, and trades the first-class fare for three cheap seats after persuading her best friends, Marlowe Blake and Sofia Torres, to come along. They arrive to find the private Caribbean island deserted but for eight D-list internet personalities. There’s no cell service, Wi-Fi, or way to leave, and the only accommodation is a crumbling villa stocked with canned food. The ethnically varied group assumes they’re being trolled—until someone dies during dinner, and a poem appears suggesting that more murders will follow. Parsons (Girls Save the World in This One) gently satirizes online culture and the ill-fated Fyre Festival in this frothy homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The cheeky mystery is both clever and satisfying, and the girls’ dynamic—Plum’s crush on Marlowe included—rings true. Ages 12–up. [em]Agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House. (June) [/em]