I Know You’re Lying

PW contributor Benedis-Grab returns to upstate New York’s Snow Valley Secondary, the setting of I Know Your Secret, with another character-driven academic mystery, this time centering four unwitting seventh graders accused of theft based on circumstantial evidence. When a backpack is stolen from the locker of popular but unmerciful Sasha Saturday, class clown Henry Davis, dancer Maddie Fox, reporter Nora Montgomery, and artist Jack Tran—under threat of expulsion and possible litigation—are given in-school suspension until one of them confesses. The students initially accuse one another, but their acrimony turns to solidarity, and launches a name-clearing investigation among them, when Sasha threatens to blackmail the whole quartet. Unfolding entirely in one day, the concisely plotted novel’s propulsive pacing keeps one eye on the clock, pausing for tender, camaraderie-deepening scenes that reveal Sasha’s leverage over each of the four. The characters’ experiences, including Vietnamese American Jack’s encounters with Covid-19-related racism and Henry’s guilt over his family’s financial precarity, add compassionate depth to a tightly coiled thriller positing that crimes, like people, have more to them than it may initially seem. Most characters read as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Sara Crowe, Pippin Properties. (Sept.)