Liar’s Beach by Katie Cotugno
A fresh new take on Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery The Mysterious Affair at Styles , with iconic detective Hercule Poirot recast as a brilliant, brash teen girl named Holiday, and narrated by her childhood friend Linden, an athlete-scholar who fits right in at his elite New England prep school—all the while hiding some secrets of his own.
Michael Linden—or just Linden to his preppy boarding school pals—doesn’t belong in wealthy, storied Martha’s Vineyard. But when his roommate Jasper invites him to spend the end of summer at his massive beachfront home, August House, Linden tries his best to fit in. Linden wouldn’t call it lying, exactly. Though it turns out August House is full of liars.
Then someone is found unconscious in Jasper’s pool, and everyone has something to hide—Jasper, his beautiful sister Eliza, their older brother Wells, and their friends. The accident is written off as just that—an accident—but Linden begins to wonder…
Holiday Proctor. Linden’s childhood friend, and the one person on the island who knows the truth about Linden. There’s nothing Holiday loves more than a good old-fashioned mystery and she’s convinced there’s a potential killer on the Vineyard. The only question is…who?
I read this book in one day. It’s definitely a quick read that kept my interest.
There really aren’t any likeable characters in this book except for Holiday. Linden is lying to everyone about not being rich. His friends lie a lot about pretty much everything. The rich family he’s staying with isn’t as perfect as he thought they’d be. When a body is found barely alive in the pool, the police are polite and just assume it was an accident. But something wasn’t right and Linden got Holiday to help him investigate. He really didn’t want to believe anyone he knew was an attempted murderer, but it started looking more and more like one of them might have been.
The ending was kind of weird, but I did see that a second book is coming out this year. I’m guessing the storyline will be what the ending was.
I gave this book 4 stars.
Have you read this? Is it on your TBR?
