New YA Mysteries: Little White Lies, The Guggenheim Mystery, The Cheerleaders and I Do Not Trust You

Mysteries are arguably the most popular genre in fiction. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have captivated readers for generations.  In teaching the mystery genre, analyzing the author’s use of classic mystery techniques can help students understand why mysteries are such “page turners.”  Foreshadowing, cliff hangers, and red herrings are just a few of the techniques the authors use to keep their readers coming back for more.  This month I am recommending four new mysteries teens might enjoy.  Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynne Barnes (The Naturals) features Southern belle debutantes sleuthing to solve a variety of mysteries. The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens (Murder Most Unladylike) reunites 12-year-old detective Ted Spark and his sister with their cousin Salim in NYC to solve an art heist mystery.  Stevens was asked to write the book for Siobhan Dowd who died after writing The London Eye Mystery, the first book in the series. The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas (Little Monsters) focuses on two teens who attempt to uncover long buried truths about what actually happened when five high school cheerleaders died in separate "accidents" several years in the past. I Do Not Trust You by Laura Burns and Melinda Metz (Crave, Sanctuary Bay), a mystery thriller with a supernatural element, pairs Memphis Engel, a brainy history geek, with Ashwin Sood, a wealthy Brit with dark secrets, in a quest to find the missing pieces for a statue of the Egyptian god Set. 

Little White Lies, the first book in the new Debutante series, introduces eighteen-year-old mechanic Sawyer Taft, who struggles to make ends meet and feels more like a parent than a daughter to her absentee mother.  She is astounded when her estranged Southern belle grandmother shows up, offering her half a million dollars if she participates in debutante season.  Although she is conflicted, Sawyer ultimately accepts.  Not only will the money pay for college, it will also give Sawyer an opportunity to find out who her biological father is.  But she gets a lot more than she bargained for when her newfound friends involve her in kidnappings, theft, and high society scandal. This layered mystery is a fun romp through makeovers, gorgeous clothing, twisted relationships and romantic liaisons. 

In The Guggenheim Mystery Kat and Ted Spark are back, after solving the mystery of their cousin Salim's disappearance in The London Eye Mystery. Now they are visiting him in NYC, where his mother has taken a job at the Guggenheim Museum.  While the three are visiting the museum, a smoke bomb goes off and when the smoke clears, a Kandinsky painting is missing. Salim's mother is being framed for the crime and Ted is determined to clear her name.  Ted, who is on the autism spectrum and has unusually keen observations skills and appreciation of patterns, enlists the help of Kat and Salim to solve the mystery. They use deductive reasoning to work through a list of suspects.Ted narrates their adventures using amusing meteorology metaphors and allusions to Homer's Odyssey.  Well integrated clues help readers to solve the puzzle along with the characters in this engaging middle level mystery. 

The Cheerleaders opens as a a grieving town is coming up on the anniversary of the death of five of their high school cheerleaders. Two died in a car accident, two in a horrific murder and the fifth in an apparent suicide.  The suicide victim's sister Monica begins to suspect that her sister Jen's death was not a reaction to the death of her friends and decides to investigate.  Told in alternating chapters from Monica's first person perspective and Jen's third person flashbacks,  the mystery unravels as Monica looks into some anonymous letters she found in her stepfather's desk, along with her sister's phone. Stepdad was the police officer who killed the supposed murderer. The letters intimate that all is not as it seems.  The car accident and the murders are linked and the real culprit is still at large. Monica becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth, alienating her friends and aligning her with people tied to the mystery.  Jen's chapters slowly reveal her disenfranchisement from her friends  and then horror and guilt over their deaths.  Readers will enjoy guessing the outcome of this complex well-written mystery.

After her archaeologist father's apparent death in a plane crash, Memphis "M" Engel, the protagonist in I Do Not Trust You, throws herself into attempting to finish his life's work: translating an ancient map written in a secret language.  Then she meets Ashwin Sood, a member of a cult which worships the ancient Egyptian god Horus.  He informs her that her father is alive and being held captive by the cult.  He will trade her father for the map which describes the locations of five different pieces of a statue of Set, a relic which has the power to destroy the world.  The statue is sought by not only his cult, but also the cult which follows Set.  Instead, M convinces him to join her on a global search for the missing pieces.  Although they must collaborate to decipher the clues, with her translating the hieroglyphics and providing vast historical knowledge and his providing the funds, they do not trust each other. When his supernatural abilities are revealed, they begin to confide in each other and join forces to thwart the two cults, whose rivalry threatens world collapse.  Their whirlwind travels through the catacombs of Paris, a sacred forest in Norway, the ruins of a submerged temple in Egypt and beyond, make for a suspenseful journey, as readers root for the two to finally trust each other and outwit those who are trying to stop them. I was captivated by all the historical information used to decode clues and lead them from the discovery of one piece after another.  All and all, it's a fun and compelling romantic mystery.

Beach Reads: The Girl from Everywhere, Smash & Grab and Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies

Summer beach reads come in all shapes and sizes.  If you want a hefty fantasy novel, I would recommend The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Helig. This time travel fantasy imagines a girl who travels around the world across centuries looking for a map that might alter her future.  Smash & Grab by Amy Christine Parker is a heist novel that unites a rich thrill-seeking girl with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks in planning a caper that will benefit them both.  Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies, a romantic comedy by Laura Stample, finds Harper Anderson with a dream internship in NYC, writing about a topic she knows little about - love.

The Girl from Everywhere is the first book in a duology, which introduces 16-year-old Nix, a girl who has traveled around the world through centuries aboard her father's time-traveling ship.  Nix was born in Hawaii in 1868; when her mother dies in childbirth, her roguish opium addicted father sets sail with her.  He can sail anywhere in time that he wants, as long as he has a map; but now he is seeking a map to take him back to 1868 so that he can change the past and resurrect his wife.  The question is, what will that do to Nix's future, in fact her entire existence?  Along with her Persian thief love interest, Kash, who has been sailing with them for two years, Nix struggles to keep her father from acquiring the map that could lead to her demise.  This skillful mashup of science fiction, Hawaiian history, and mythology is filled with swashbuckling adventure, making it a must read for summer.

In Smash and Grab Lexi is a rich adrenaline junkie, whose greatest joy is executing dares like base jumping off a skyscraper with her crew.  Christian is a studious guy from the wrong side of town, who is blackmailed into committing bank robberies by the gang leaders in his neighborhood.  Their paths cross when Lexi, whose father had been jailed for bank fraud, is trying to find evidence to implicate his boss, at the same time Christian's gang is casing his bank for their next job.  Romantic sparks fly as they cooperate to plan a heist that will help Lexi exonerate her father and Christian find a way out of a life of crime, so he can go to college.  Told from alternating points of view, the story unfolds at a breakneck pace, keeping the reader turning pages and hoping their star-crossed love will find a way.

Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies focuses on Harper Anderson, a California girl who longs to be a writer.  When she is offered an internship at a teen magazine in NYC, she jumps at the chance.  However, her "edgy" personal essay about her fictitious dating experiences, leads her editor to make her the magazine's dating blogger.  As she tries to fit in with her fellow interns and come up with witty articles, the web of lies she spins spirals out of control.  Harper begins dating Carter, the son of the magazine's owner, but the guy she really connects with is a dog walker named Ben.  Her snarky articles make her a social media darling, but when her best friend finds out Harper has appropriated her dating experiences as her own, Harper must come clean.  The love triangle is predictable, but the author creates a sympathetic character, whose hilarious dating blogs and comedic misadventures keep the reader in stitches and rooting for her all the way.