Title: Keep This to Yourself
Author: Tom Ryan
Publisher: AW Teen
Length: 320 Pages
Category: Young Adult, Murder Mystery
At a Glance: Keep This to Yourself is some outstanding Young Adult fiction, a fantastic whodunit, and comes highly recommended for its taut and suspenseful delivery.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: It’s been a year since the Catalog Killer terrorized the sleepy seaside town of Camera Cove, killing four people before disappearing without a trace. Like everyone else in town, eighteen-year-old Mac Bell is trying to put that horrible summer behind him—easier said than done since Mac’s best friend Connor was the murderer’s final victim. But when he finds a cryptic message from Connor, he’s drawn back into the search for the killer—who might not have been a random drifter after all. Now nobody—friends, neighbors, or even the sexy stranger with his own connection to the case—is beyond suspicion. Sensing that someone is following his every move, Mac struggles to come to terms with his true feelings towards Connor while scrambling to uncover the truth.
Review: Set in a small coastal town rocked by a series of premeditated and gruesome murders a year ago, author Tom Ryan communicates a perceptible sense of loss of innocence and the lingering insecurity born of the violence that upended the quiet and quaint lives of Camera Cove’s residents—including the four teens who have tried to come to terms with the death of their childhood best friend, Connor. The town wants, and needs, to find a new normal, to move forward rather than linger in the darkest moment in its history, but the killer was never found. Justice was never served. And closure is made more difficult without answers. At least, that’s the case for Mac Bell.
Mac’s narration and the present-tense delivery of this story offers up a sense of immediacy to what can fairly be termed his lingering obsession with Connor’s death. The chance discovery of a clue, a year too late, only escalates Mac’s need for answers—for Connor and for himself. Mac doesn’t pull a miracle out of thin air to accomplish what the police couldn’t, which I appreciated. In fact, he makes more than a few mistakes along the way, but there is also no doubt that his friendship with Connor gives him some advantages. As he sets out on his own investigation into the crimes, his amateur sleuthing sees him stumbling upon more questions, few to no resolutions, and adds a layer of danger and intrigue to the pathos of not only Connor’s loss but to the crumbling of the friendships between the remaining group of friends—Mac, Carrie, Doris, and Ben. The friction between them only increases as they each beg Mac to let go of his fixation and allow everyone to move on. But, the question of unresolved feelings come into play for Mac, and he’s forced to confront them while he persists in his obsession to find justice for his friend, and the other victims.
Which introduces someone new into his life, Quill Daye, the cousin of one of the Catalog Killer’s victims.
The desire to escape the town, in the summer before all the remaining friends head off to college, complements the overall tone and mood of the story and reveals an ever-morphing picture of Connor—the golden boy, the guy everyone gravitated to, the one with a talent for art and a limitless future. The one with all the secrets that, if brought to light, could ruin the lives of the survivors. The devil is in the details in Keep This to Yourself, and Ryan lays them out in true murder mystery fashion—lots of dead ends, useless clues, setbacks and disappointments, red-herrings and shocking discoveries. Everything is parsed out in due time, with explosive revelations and enough twists to keep me wrong-footed all the way through to the final reveal. Added to this is a sweet relationship that blossoms between Mac and Quill, which adds a bit of hope and happiness to the resolution of the mystery.
Keep This to Yourself is some outstanding Young Adult fiction, a fantastic whodunit, and while there was a minor omission—for me—in the aftermath and impact the solving of the crimes would have had on two people central to the killer, this one still comes highly recommended for its taut and suspenseful delivery.
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