CBR18 Book 55: "Trust Fall" by Lynn Painter

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR18 Bingo: Season (this is set in the autumn/fall in New York, the word 'fall' is literally in the title and there is an actual literal 'season' - like in Regency England, for the rich prep school kids in the story)

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be released on the 29th of September

Julia Lowell can't believe how much her life changed, almost overnight. One day, she was in her small Nebraska town, heartbroken because her boyfriend Will had found someone else, the next, she's living in a gorgeous building on the Upper West Side in New York City, the beneficiary of a will no one in her family knew about. The reclusive old man her family had been delivering groceries to for years, who occasionally came to their holiday celebrations, left them not only his stunning building in New York, but a fortune of millions of dollars. However, to secure the inheritance, Julia, her twin brother Liam and her parents have to live in New York for at least six months, and Julia and Liam have to enrol in a fancy private high school for the same amount of time. 

Unfortunately, while Julia was never exactly popular back in Nebraska, and her tiny group of friends got even smaller once Will left her for another girl, at Gardenwood, most of the filthy rich student body are like starving hyenas, and Julia is a tasty and wounded gazelle. To make matters worse, her brother Liam seems to instantly settle in, charming everyone and making friends. Julia, on the other hand, has two girls in the entire school not treating her like a pariah, and is barely passing maths. Low test scores could get her expelled from the school, jeopardising one of the clauses in the will instantly. The kindly headmaster promises to discreetly arrange for a tutor to help her.

If Julia wasn't utterly desperate, she would never accept help from Damion Rutledge, the boy whose nose she nearly accidentally broke during their first meeting, before Julia and Liam had even started school. Damion is the great-nephew of the man who left the Lowells a fortune, and he and his parents refuse to believe that the old man wasn't scammed by a bunch of money-grubbing country bumpkins. Damion hates the idea that strangers are living in the house his great-uncle had one day promised him, and wants to figure out how exactly a family of complete strangers inherited the majority of Uncle Remington's wealth. Tutoring Julia in maths allows him to enter the house he so misses, while investigating what the Lowells might have done to scam his uncle. He also gets to tease Julia, which is quickly becoming his favourite thing in the world.

Because it needs to be kept secret that Damion is tutoring Julia in maths, none of the other students at Gardenwood knows exactly why he keeps spending so much time with her. Rumours are flying around school, and sadly, they make the mean girls all the more determined to put Julia in her place. Of course, the more time Damion actually spends with Julia and observing her family, the more he discovers that they are probably much more worthy recipients of his great-uncle's fortune than his already wealthy and status-obsessed parents. He also seems to be falling for Julia, the girl he had declared his enemy...

I have heard a lot of good things about several of Lynn Painter's YA books, and bought some of them in e-book sales these last few years. However, this ARC of her most recent book is the first one I've actually read. This makes me feel more optimistic with regard to the ones I have from her backlist.

Julia is introverted and clearly suffers from social anxiety, something it appears no one in her family really appreciates. They seem to think she exaggerates her discomfort. She is smart and well-read and while she considers herself stupid when it comes to maths, it's also clear from how quickly she improves from Damion's tutoring, that she just needed the subject explained to her in a different way. She is both excited and terrified about the idea of moving to New York, having consumed so much media focused on the city. 

She certainly does not deserve to be treated the way she is by almost everyone at her school, and she is a stronger person than me for putting up with so much harassment for so long. Considering how protective her brother comes off about her in the last quarter or so of this book, I am rather surprised that he doesn't notify anyone about all the crap his twin is subjected to. Yes, it's clearly a condition of them getting the inheritance that the twins attend the fancy school for six months, but there is nothing legal anywhere that says they're not allowed to tell the school's management about all the bullying that Julia is subjected to. That her brother just happily seems to settle in with his little circle of friends, without telling his parents, their legal adviser Bernard or the headmaster about Julia's problems, makes me think less of him. 

Damion is clearly a worthwhile person deep down, although it is hidden under a lot of privilege and snobbery. He initially wants to hate the Lowells because he believes they conned his Uncle Remington somehow, and he believes they have what he had expected would one day be his. Julia becomes the target of most of his focus, since he is asked by the headmaster if he can tutor her to improve her maths skills. While part of him wants her to suffer and fail, he is also fascinated by her, and helping her with her schoolwork will also allow him to spend time in the house he has so many happy memories of. He claims to not care what anyone thinks of him, and since he is rich, handsome and popular, the gossip about him and Julia doesn't negatively impact him in any way, while it makes her social standing even more precarious.

Thankfully, Damion, who comes off as a bit of a spoiled and entitled jerk to begin with, does a lot of growing as a person throughout the book. Julia doesn't really need to change, but Damion comes to see that Julia is right about him, and that while he refuses to join any of the judgemental cliques of the school because he's such "a rebel", he also doesn't condemn their words or behaviour. For the second half of the book, he improves considerably, and he proves himself a master of the grand gesture in the end. 

I think I'm far too Scandinavian and socialist for most of the rich people shenanigans throughout this book. Instead of prom, they have a series of social events, ending in an actual high society ball, complete with elaborate costumes. That sort of nonsense doesn't appeal to me, although as a reader of historical romance, who doesn't like it when the hero sees the heroine in a gorgeous gown and goes weak at the knees because of it? That part was nice. My favourite parts were when Julia goes back to Nebraska, away from the stress and mistreatment in New York, to a much nicer environment in her old hometown. Her cousin and friend seemed lovely and very supportive, and even her ex-boyfriend eventually realised that he had behaved badly towards her (without ever wanting her back - no one wants that). 

I was unsure of where this was going at first, mainly because Damion was a hard character to read, whose constant teasing of Julia seemed more like manipulation than flirting. In a good romance, the characters change because they see that it is necessary, not because they are asked to, or rescued by the love of a good love interest, and that is what happens here too. By the time he and Julie actually kiss, I was absolutely hooked. I'm glad I followed my whim and requested this ARC. It was a delightful autumnal read. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 68: "One of Us is Lying" by Karen M. McManus

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: School (The Breakfast Club with murder. So much high school drama)

On a Monday afternoon, five high schoolers find themselves in detention after someone planted phones in their bags. They all claim the phones are not theirs, but the teacher is not listening. There is Cooper, the star athlete, with a promising career in baseball ahead of him. There is Addy, always perfectly put together and the homecoming princess. There is Nate, the school's bad boy, who is on probation for dealing drugs. There is Bronwyn, most likely to become valedictorian and hoping for a spot at Yale, where several generations of her family have studied. And finally, there is Simon, who runs the school's extremely accurate, and frequently cruel, gossip app. Everyone follows it, and while he may ruin reputations in the process, Simon never lies.

Less than an hour later, only four remain, after Simon is taken to the hospital after suffering severe anaphylactic shock. Strangely, while everyone was scrambling to try to save him, he didn't appear to have an EPIPen in his bag, and every single EPIPen in the school nurse's office was also found to be missing. By Monday evening, Simon is dead. The cause of death appears to have been peanut oil at the bottom of the paper cup he drank from, just before he collapsed. It was well known at school that he was deathly allergic to peanuts. The police don't think his death is accidental, and as the four remaining students from detention are questioned by the police, it becomes clear that Simon had planned to reveal a deep, dark secret about each of them the next day, so they all have motives for wanting him dead. He just hadn't had time to post the entry yet, but it's there on his computer for them all to see. 

Four teens, who previously barely spoke to one another, are now cast into the spotlight, all suspects in a murder investigation. Is one of them a ruthless murderer, or did someone else manage to sneak inside the classroom while everyone in there was distracted by a collision in the parking lot?

Mostly, I only read historical mysteries, set in the Victorian era, with lady sleuths. However, this year, not only have I read a lot more mysteries in general (24 so far), but the majority of them have been contemporaries. Thanks are due to Richard Osman and Karen M. McManus. This book was entertaining and twisty enough that I immediately ignored my planned TBR list for October to read the two sequels (which I won't be reviewing, because I don't need to). Book 1 is still the best, book 2 was a bit weaker and book 3 was pretty good again. 

McManus alternates chapters for each of the protagonists, the Bayview Four, as they come to be known in all the news reports. It allows us to share in their fears and insecurities, and makes us as readers understand why Simon revealing their secrets would be so devastating to them. One of them is likely an unreliable narrator, because it wouldn't be much fun if we found out who the killer was too early in the story. Very shortly after Simon dies, someone starts writing anonymous Tumblr posts claiming to be Simon's killer, revealing things that it seems only someone in the detention room would know. It also becomes obvious that Simon must have shared his password with someone, because all those secrets Simon didn't have time to reveal before his death are published, showing the world exactly what may have motivated one (or several) of the Bayview Four to want to poison Simon.

I've read quite a few mysteries, so there were a couple of twists in the story that I had predicted before they were revealed, but part of why this book is so entertaining isn't even the central mystery, it's getting to know Bronwyn, Nate, Addy and Cooper, and seeing these four very different people form an unlikely friendship because they are now murder suspects. It was also why I wanted to keep going with the series, I really liked all of them, and wanted to find out what more was in store for them.

I saw on the internet that this book was also turned into a TV series. It looks like they made big narrative changes to the story, though, which did not appeal to me. There are far too many good things out there that I don't have the energy or will to watch right now, I'm not going to watch a disappointing adaptation of a book I really enjoyed. 

If you're not put off by YA books and want a fun, slightly twisty read, this is worth picking up. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have the UK paperback cover, and I much prefer it to the American cover with the four faces in a grid (where the faces are all cut out, creepy much?) This is sparse and elegant, and while the tag lines are a bit hokey, they fit with the contents of the book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.