I was provided an eARC of this book to read before I interviewed the author for a book festival (set for 2020 so of course it had to be postponed). I'm still fairly new to YA, and am naively surprised by how good the books I've been reading are! This was a great book with lots of turns and twists and is considered a thriller. I was kept guessing and the author did it well.

Anna Cicconi takes up a summer job as a nanny in Herron Hill, a small village in the Hamptons. But, when she arrives, she is in the thick of the disappearance of Zoe Spanos. This does not help Anna's case who looks mysteriously like the missing Zoe.

As we dive deeper into the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, we get hints of Anna's life and the past and present notions of her life as the investigation of Zoe Spanos continues on.

I gave I killed Zoe Spanos 3.5 stars. I did enjoy parts of this novel but I felt like it didn't hold as much attention that a murder mystery novel like this book would hold. There were many different aspects to the way Anna is displayed and sometimes there were just some situations were I was just slightly irritated with Anna.

I am a huge fan of murder mystery but something about I Killed Zoe Spanos didn't really hit the marks for me. Which, is why I've always been very picky when it comes to crime fiction and murder mysteries.

I felt like I Killed Zoe Spanos didn't have the aspects of crime, there was not much of an investigation, except for the short excerpts of Anna being interviewed throughout the book. With murder mystery, there was some thing that did not bring satisfaction to me when reading.

Thank you again to NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review

I'm going to start off by saying that I normally do not read thrillers/mysteries, but this one is just amazing. There are so many fun twists and turns that leave you shooketh!

I had so many questions while reading this that I thought I had the answers to, but then something would happen that would just completely change everything! I love it when books get you thinking that it's one thing and then it swerves a different way that you weren't expecting.

Anyways, overall I absolutely loved it! I would definitely recommend to anyone who loves thrillers/mysteries or just anyone in general!

Social Justice Topics:
▪️Women’s Rights

Grade Level: 9th and up

I Killed Zoey Spanos is a nail-biting YA psychological thriller. Frick’s nonlinear timeline and points of view—the perspective of the suspected killer and the perspective of a teen podcaster—make this book really hard to put down. Perfect for high schoolers, this book would be rated PG-13 due to language and some content.

A gripping whodunnit that examines the stability of memory, the precarity of identity, and the intensity of coming of age. The unreliable narrator had me hooked the entire time!

I just couldn't get into this one. I tried the audiobook to get into it because I wanted to try and get a review up but I just didn't click with it.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy.

This book took forever for me to get through. I loved the idea of the part podcast format, especially since I loved Sadie. But unlike Sadie, the alternating format/POV is a little sloppy. The plot moves very slowly and felt bogged down with quite a bit of filler that really didn’t seem to matter. Things didn’t really pick up until the last quarter of the book. I honestly would’ve stopped reading if I had been about to find a summary of the end but I couldn’t. Despite not feeling terribly invested in any character or the story, I still wanted to know how it ended. I think mostly because I felt confused more than anything. The end is wrapped up neatly, although I found it all to be quite absurd and highly unlikely. I can understand why some people enjoyed this one, but it won’t be making my list of recommendations.

I didn't end up finishing this book. I think the beginning started off different than what I was expecting, and so I turned my attention to other titles. I hope to come back to it in the future, though.

I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN HOW GOOD THIS BOOK IS.

There were so many possible suspects and the main character somehow thinking it was her and WOW. And the ending! I feel like it just tied everything up together so well.

Okay so, backing up. The story revolves around the main character Anna, but not really. She has a summer job in a town where a girl named Zoe went missing, presumed dead. As she hears more and more about the case. she becomes convinced that she somehow killed Zoe, even though Anna has never met or seen Zoe.

Anna is eventually charged when Zoe's body is found, but it makes little sense to a girl named Martina, who doesn't think Anna did it, despite Anna confessing. The story revolves around the two POVs of these girls as the mystery unravels.

I enjoyed the audiobook of I Killed Zoe Spanos. I’m always drawn in when a podcast is part of the story and really feel those books lend themselves to being read with my ears instead of my eyes. In this case, we know right from the start that Zoe is dead and Anna confessed. But did Anna really have anything to do with her death?

From there we see alternating timelines and I was compelled to learn what really happened. Ultimately - the ending didn’t really work for me. I don’t think this is a story that will stick with me.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

Anna tries to put her history of drinking and partying behind when she takes a nanny position in the Hamptons. She starts feeling uneasy when the townspeople start pointing out the resemblance between her and Zoe Spanos, a girl who went missing earlier that year. Flash forward to the present time when Anna has confessed to killing Zoe. Why does Anna look so similar to Zoe? Why does Anna inexplicably have memories of places she's never been? And what led Anna to kill Zoe?

This story was well-written and engaging. There are a lot of strange puzzle pieces that make the reader eager to solve the mystery. I also enjoyed the podcast aspect of the story. I was excited to see how things would start coming together. But as the pieces started falling into place at the end and confessions are made, I was finding it harder to suspend my belief. The characters' motives are really not strong enough to warrant the actions they take and things wrapped up a little too neatly for my taste. The ending really didn't do it for me but I did have an overall positive experience reading this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I tried and tried to get into this book, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t connect with the characters and the writing fell flat for me.

Was this really the YA Rebecca? No, not really. But was it really good? Yes. Plenty of tension and suspense, tightly written, with damaged characters who wanted to redeem themselves, this book had all the mystery! There were so many different directions it could have gone that it really was unpredictable. I really enjoyed it!

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick

4.75 stars

Where to start in reviewing I Killed Zoe Spanos without giving anything away? The plot follows Anna as she confesses to killing Zoe Spanos in a police interrogation and then flashes back to how she got to the interrogation and the confession and the events leading up to it. We also get a podcast and the perspective of Martina, who is best friend with Zoe’s sister, and she wants to find out where Zoe went and what happened to her. This is an intense YA thriller that has wonderful build up and is set in a bougie coastal tourist town with a bunch of upscale white people, except for Zoe’s boyfriend who happens to be one of the few Black people in the town. It leads to Martina being suspicious of him since he was her boyfriend and there was some friction (it also leads to a great conversation on being Black and under suspicion for something you didn’t do). I don’t want to give really anything about this story away because believe me you will want to know who killed Zoe Spanos and how she died. I didn’t guess correctly in who did it or how she died.


There are some things you should know going in: Kit Frick heavily relies on Gothic suspense in regards to houses and secrets passageways (so if that’s your thing, this is it), the audiobook has a full-cast and the podcast episodes are wonderfully done, the pacing gets a little slow in the early middle as Anna adjusts to being an au pair, but once we hit the built up to her looking like the missing Zoe it gets juicy, this is a character driven plot and thriller- the mystery is all wrapped up into the characters and what Anna can uncover, Anna is an unreliable narrator, nothing is as it seems and you should be suspicious of everyone, and the ending is satisfying and frustratingly good all at the same time. This is a YA mystery that hits the mark. It’s smart, daring, and sophisticated. I can’t recommend this enough!


Whimsical Writing Scale: 5

I’ll briefly talk about the characters, but I won’t go into depth. Anna is our main character and she is your typical unreliable narrator- spotty memory, past with heavy drinking and alcohol abuse, and she looks exactly like the missing Zoe Spanos.

Paisley is the girl that Anna is caring for over the summer and she sees a lot of supish things in Herron Mills. I loved her energy and the innocence she brought to the story. I usually love kid characters and Paisley was one who worked and developed the story.

Caden is Zoe’s boyfriend and he lives next door to Paisley in a giant fancy manor with a lot of secrets. One of the biggest secrets isn’t so much as did Caden do it (because it’s obvious he didn’t), but what happened between him and Zoe that lead to Zoe changing?

Martina is the best friend of Zoe’s sister, Aster, and hosts a podcast dedicated to locating Zoe. She offers the journalistic side to the novel and it blends well with Anna being able to learn more about Herron Mills and Zoe, but also in uncovering what happened to Zoe after Anna confesses.

There’s Max who went to Brown with Zoe and was in the biology department wit her who seems to have a weird obsession with Anna and keeps popping up.

Also, keep note of Anna’s best friend because she plays a big role in the unfolding of the story as well.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 4.25

Character Scale: 5

Villain Scale: 5 (what a shocker!)

Overall, I think more people need to read (or listen to) I Killed Zoe Spanos because it is a fantastic addition to the YA mystery/thriller genre. It’s a strong book steeped in secrets, atmosphere, unreliable characters, and a privileged town that doesn’t take anything seriously because money is power (their cops are a JOKE). The commentary is great and I think teens will eat this up! I know I did and I want to get a copy for my classroom because this is a book many people will be able to enjoy.


Plotastic Scale: 4.75

Cover Thoughts: I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this cover! The colors, the glasses, the illustration. It’s all perfect.

Thank you, Netgalley and Margaret K. McElderry Books, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

"When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl who has been missing since New Year’s Eve. Anna bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, and her mere presence in town stirs up still-raw feelings about the unsolved case..."

I love reading YA books to tell my students who like thrillers and suspense what books they might be intrested in and are a great read. I enjoyed this book and look forward to telling my students to pick up a copy.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing for the eARC!

The ending really made this book. The entire time we think Anna had something to do with Zoe's death but she was really her half sister! She had nothing to do with her death. But she was there for the death of Starr and them keeping it a secret is left and not resolved. I suppose the guilt made her black out so much and lose time. It had it's slow moments where we just needed things to get moved along, but it picked up about 75 percent in and to the end. I was curious about why she was blacking out and having such bad memories and I thought maybe, when I read how George almost dropped her, that he had and she had hit her head and it messed her up but he didn't drop her so that wasn't it. She was just really drunk that night and super guily and it just ate her up to the point where she concocted these thoughts. But for me the shocker was finding out who her father was and that she had sisters. And did Aster know? She was ready to for Anna to take the fall but I wasn't clear on if she knew they were half sisters or not. I kind of wish they had done a chapter on that, at the end. Overall, nice little mystery.

3.5 stars

i really wanted to love this because the plot was so intriguing, i was very interested in the format of the story, and i've been hearing such great things about it. unfortunately, while i was initially hooked, things quickly started to go downhill. it definitely wasn't a bad book by any means. but for something that had such a strong start, this did not live up to its potential in the slightest.

so this book follows a girl named anna who gets a job as a nanny for a wealthy family in the hamptons during the summer before she starts college. when she arrives in the town, people start telling her that she looks very similar to a local girl who went missing the previous year, zoe spanos. strange things start happening, like she starts getting flashes of memory of zoe and people start acting really weird around her. before the summer is over, zoe's body has been found and anna has confessed to killing her.

the book is told in two timelines, the start of the summer when anna gets to the hamptons and the fall after zoe's body has been discovered. the summer timeline is told from anna's perspective and it's all about her coming to the area, meeting people, and starting to get these weird memories of zoe even though she's pretty sure they've never met. the fall timeline is told from another local girl, martina jenkins, as she tries to figure out exactly what happened to zoe. she hosts a podcast each week following the case and she gets very involved in the investigation.

i really liked the podcast element, especially listening to the audiobook because it had a full cast and really felt like you were listening to a podcast (similar to sadie by courtney summers). however, i don't think the podcast element was utilized to its full potential and i wish that it played a bigger part in the story. my biggest complaint with the book was that i didn't love the way the timeline jumped back and forth. i don't mind reading from two timelines. but the way the author spliced these two timelines together didn't always make the most sense. we'd get information in the present timeline before learning about it in the past and then it would jump back to the summer and you'd read it all over again. it made it less enjoyable because the shock factor was gone.

also, i think the book was trying to do too many things. between the mystery of zoe's disappearance (and eventual body discovery), the podcast, a secondary mystery that doesn't really come into play too much but is definitely there, and all the characters having so much going on in their lives, the book really wasn't long enough to fully delve into each thing. it all felt kind of surface level. and the mystery itself was predictable and completely unoriginal. i feel like i've read this story a lot before and so it was much less exciting to get to the end and think "yeah, okay i figured that out a long time ago."

it definitely wasn't a bad book by any stretch, but it also wasn't amazing. i wanted to love it more than i did and my expectations were pretty high. if you're new to mysteries and you're looking for a good place to start, this is probably a perfect book to get into. if you like books with mixed media, go for it. but if you're looking for a solid ya thriller, this is not it unfortunately.

I enjoyed this so much! A truly twisty mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very last line. I've already ordered a copy for my library, and I'm sure the teens here will love it as much as I did.

The mysterious disappearance of Zoe Spanos isn’t the only mystery revealed in this book, which is full of plot twists and emotional confusion and revelations.

This was definitely a page-turner. Anna, the new nanny, is mistaken on her first full day of work for a girl who has been missing for months. She quickly decides to wear her hair up instead of down, so hopefully she can have less awkward encounters with the locals. Matters only get more complicated as Anna can’t resist the thought that so much of Herron Mills feels familiar to her, although her mother and her best friend insist she’s never been there before.

Anna as an unreliable narrator was an excellent character. She takes the job in Herron Mills to remove herself from what she knows was an unhealthy lifestyle. Before nannying, she had finished up high school by just partying. Lots of drinking, a handful of drugs, a few blackouts. Life had been chaotic enough that she now questions her own memories of events in her life. She’s trying to be a good person, but she’s not entirely sure what kind of person she was before.

Could Anna and Zoe have been connected before? Why is Herron Mills so familiar to Anna? And most importantly, what actually happened to Zoe? Different characters want the answer to these questions either discovered, or hidden, for all different reasons. Who is telling the truth, and who is doing their best to hide the truth?

Overall, this book was a compelling read, and getting to the end to find the answers was an irresistible race. I’d give this book 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to young adults and adults who enjoy a great, unpredictable mystery.

*I WAS PROVIDED A DIGITAL GALLEY VIA NETGALLEY IN RETURN FOR MY HONEST REVIEW. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT MY OPINION*

I think this was the first book I really *latched* on to in the past few months. Who knew I needed a thriller to help me climb out of my reading funk!

Kit Frick enraptured me from the first few pages. I quickly fell in love with her writing style, and I found myself not wanting to put the book down.

In regards to the police presence in this book, I'll admit, I got a little wary. I'm in agreement that our current law enforcement system is past the line of faulty and more into the danger and deadly zones. This book didn't shy away from that fact either. When Anna is taken into police custody for a murder investigation, the police interrogate her--without her mother present--for over six hours straight. She ends up confessing to the crime, even though she isn't entirely sure she committed it.

With the help of an acquaintance-turned-podcast host, the truths and the lies are uncovered and told for all to hear.

I'm not overhyping this when I'm saying this is a thriller/mystery that will have you guessing until the very end of the book. I was, in no way, able to fully predict everything that Kit Frick had planned and provided, and I completely loved the story for that. As someone who overanalyzes everything until the details and experiences are spoiled, I really appreciated Frick giving that intense sense of mysteriousness and never letting up on the short-falling hints. It helped me stay into the story, and it quickly became one I couldn't get over.

The character development in this book was also phenomenal. I felt like both the main and side characters were each given the right amount of development as needed, if not more so than that too. My personal favorite was definitely our main character Anna, but a close-contender for second place had to be Martina. I really connected with Martina in her need for fact-filled truths and correct answers. Even when the tables seemed to turn against her, she didn't let up and continued forward, and I feel like that was a great quality for her character to have.

One thing I was a little iffy on was the ending. While I was shocked by the outcome, I wasn't all that happy about how it was written out. The rest of the novel was this beautiful and intricately woven story, and then once you got to the last few chapters, it became kind of summarized.

Other than that, I really did love this book. For that, I rate it 4.5 stars. I look forward to reading from Kit Frick again and can't wait to see what she has next for us.