Listen to the First Chapter:
From the Book Jacket:
Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.
The town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone has declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.
Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself.
Reviews:
History threatens to repeat itself in a small town known for disappearing teen girls.
When their mother is suddenly sent to rehab, twins Ellery and Ezra Corcoran are uprooted from California to live with their grandmother in Vermont. True-crime–obsessed Ellery knows the town is infamous for girls going missing. Her own aunt, her mother’s twin, disappeared 23 years ago, never to be found. Just five years ago, Lacey Kilduff was found murdered in nearby Murderland, a Halloween theme park. All eyes are on the twins as the new kids in town, and Ellery’s pulled between the popular girls and Malcolm Kelly, the younger brother of Declan, Lacey’s boyfriend and the person everyone suspects murdered her. Disturbing acts of vandalism pop up, threatening a sequel to events at Murderland. When Ellery’s nominated for homecoming queen, the threats begin to target her and the other princesses, and no matter what he does, Malcolm keeps ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time, making for an easy scapegoat. Alternating between Ellery’s and Malcolm’s perspectives, the mystery unfurls at a deliciously escalating pace, filled with believable red herrings and shocking twists. Readers will furiously turn pages until the satisfying end. Though the students are predominantly white, Ellery and Ezra are biracial (white and Latinx), and Ezra is gay. Malcolm is white, and his best friend is a bisexual Korean American girl.
Masterfully paced with well-earned thrills and spooky atmosphere worth sinking into.
-- Kirkus Reviews
A dead body in the middle of the road (the high school’s science teacher) welcomes twins Ellery and Ezra Corcoran, 17, to their new home in Echo Ridge, Vt., where they’ve been sent to live with their estranged grandmother during their mother Sadie’s court-appointed rehab for opioid addiction. Ellery, a true-crime buff, uses the opportunity to look into Echo Ridge’s notorious unsolved mysteries: the disappearance of Sadie’s identical twin sister after Sadie was crowned homecoming queen 23 years earlier, and the murder of Lacey Kilduff, the homecoming queen found strangled at Murderland, the local Halloween theme park, five years ago. After the science teacher dies, Ellery is nominated for the homecoming court, and someone begins to threaten Ellery and the other two nominees for queen, tagging signs and promising a Murderland redux. When one of the two possible queens goes missing, Ellery dons her amateur detective hat, putting herself and her loved ones in danger. With complex characters and intricate plotting, McManus (One of Us Is Lying) delivers a fast-paced, twisty whodunit. -- Publishers Weekly