Soon-to-be Dead Boys

YA chiller 

     When my older daughter, Amber, recommends a book you better believe I check it out.  She knows what I like to read better than just about anyone else.  And when she gifts me a book I know it's going to be special.  Kylee Awiech's Soon-to-be Dead Boys which she just gave me for Christmas is no exception.  It combines a captivating plot with discussion of an issue that in America is still too often flying under the collective radar.

     "Shelby gives me a slow nod.  I get that look a lot.  My love for all things Pathfinders really scares people sometimes.  I can't help it.  I know what I'm meant to do with my life.  I've known since I was thirteen."

     Ellie feels a serious vocation to become a detective.  She's been a member of Pathfinders, an organization to interest kids in law enforcement careers, for years.  Now as a high school senior she's the team leader.

     The first meeting of the school year the team gets a surprise not even their mentor, Officer Ken, anticipated.  The students break into pairs and compete in an evidence finding competition near the river.  Ellie's best friend, Anika, finds an all too real dead body in the river...

     ...And it's not just any dead body.  The first day of school purple papers had been all over the place.  They contained lists of high school boys, singling them out as catcallers or guys who don't know the meaning of the word no.  The papers end with a warning to the boys that the anonymous authors, unwilling to stay silent any longer, are coming after them.  The dead boy, Dylan Williams had made the list.

     He isn't the only one on it to meet an untimely end.

     Ellie is determined to find the killer.  Even though her single minded pursuit is coming between her and Anika.  Even though she thinks she may be a suspect in one of the cases.  Even though she's doing some not quite ethical things in her pursuit of information.  Even she may be putting herself in serious danger.  

     Toward the end of the book Ellie reflects on how, even though they had done terrible things the murder victims were human beings.

"Who am I, or Shelby, or Brooke, to decide who gets to live and who gets to die?  But what are we supposed to do when it seems there's no system of justice to step in either.  There are so many stories of boys getting away with assault and everyone worrying that punishing them at all will ruin their lives."

     If you are a person with a passion  for justice who enjoys a captivating chiller you're going to find Soon-to-be Dead Boys to be a must read.

On a purrrsonal note, after some library volunteering time today I went to Hannaford to prepare to party.  Chips and sour cream and onion soup mix to make an old school dip.  Two kinds of Pringles.  Three kinds of candy.  I still have Christmas Peeps.  It will be a New Years Eve to remember.  (Jules)

And we're stocked on cat treats.  Party on!!! (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to Amber with compliments on her good taste in literature.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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