Member Reviews
This mystery kept me hooked from the beginning. I really enjoyed the format. The main character, Kayla, is telling the story through letters to her best friend Lainie who is accused of murder. The rest of the story is filled in by witness interviews and the reader is left to try to decipher what really happened.
Throughout the book I went back and forth liking and disliking Lainie and Jackson. I wasn’t sure if Lainy was innocent or not. I wondered if there was something else behind Jackson’s death. The stories that were shared throughout the book left you wondering if there was something else going on. Lainie likes to lie or exaggerate the truth but does that make her a killer? You will have to read the book for yourself to find out.
Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.
Oof. I don't know about this one. I'm intrigued by unreliable narratives but I don't think this one works especially well. We get the sense pretty early on that something isn't right about the story but the final chapters leave me wondering what we're meant to take away from this.
Thank you Netgalley for the arc. Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I DNF'd at 37%. I wasn't intrigued and wasn't vibing with the writing style.
I'm the definition of insanity when it comes to YA thrillers - I keep expecting a new result even though most of them are the same old thing. I wasn't especially shocked by anything in this story and I'm not better for having picked it up. But, of course, it wasn't awful, and I'm sure teens who aren't as used to the genre will be just fine with this.
I had to give up on this book. It did not hold my attention. I wish there was more description. Maybe others will like to more than me so please check it out!
Not the most original or engaging book I’ve ever read, but not awful. The camp premise was interesting; more should have been done to build that world up more. The letter format the story was told through was good. The end was predictable. More could have been done to make it more believable though. Interactions should have been more present to really sell the outcome. Would recommend for a quick and easy read.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.
DNF @ 10%
Perhaps it is because I am an adult, but I honestly found the writing unbearable. I liked the format and tend to enjoy epistolary pieces so I tried to keep reading. Kayla's letters make her sound way younger than she is supposed to be and I did not find her to be a likeable character or even a good love-to-hate character. I just did not care about her or the story.
I really enjoyed this book. The writing captured my attention right away with the multiple interviews/point of views. Made for a fast paced read. Kayla was obsessive, loyal, crazy and enjoyable to follow. I guessed the plot about half way through but I still enjoyed the ending. No shocking reveals, but delivered in an enjoyable way!
Through letters, court documents, interviews, and news stories, "Nobody Knows But You" offers summer camp thrills, heartbreak, and an ever-unfolding narrative that comes together slowly like a puzzle. As each piece slides into place, Kayla and Lainey's story builds on itself, evolving into something that, by the end, will certainly have some readers frozen in surprise. What is the truth? What really happened that night? And what marks a murderer? A solid addition to the YA thriller canon.
This one is like "I've read this story before" because it's like every YA mystery book. Same things, same characters skills, etc.
Thank you, NetGalley, and publishes for providing a copy of this book!
Slight spoilers ahead, nothing too descriptive.
Nobody Knows But You focuses on the mystery surrounding the death of a camper on the eve of the last day of camp. Lainie, the victim's on-again/off-again girlfriend stands accused. Kayla, her devoted best friend, is holding onto Lainie's secrets as well as her own and what everyone wants to know is, did Lainie do it?
The story takes place a few months after the murder and is told through a series of letters written by Kayla, news reports, interview transcripts, and text messages. While I think that this was an interesting writing style, some of it fell a bit flat for me. Kayla's letters had started to get a bit monotonous. I personally would've liked to read scenes from their time at summer camp as flashbacks, so that we could hear Kayla's feelings in real-time as opposed to her recalling them afterward, and then had the letters be present tense. In my opinion that would've added a bit more variety to the writing style and would've helped it to feel less stagnant at times
While I found the story interesting, I also found it a bit predictable. At the start of the book the way things are phrased it is easy to assume that Lainie is the camper who has been murdered, but then a few chapters in you discover that Lainie is in fact alive and it was Jackson who has been murdered. I will say that I was actually surprised when that reveal came because it was all pointing in the other direction, and because of how quickly the reveal came. I then found myself asking, "then what is the big plot twist?" This is when the book became a bit predictable for me, the "big plot twist" I ended up guessing a few chapters later.
I feel that there could've been more development with some of the characters, as well as their motives, but overall I thought it was a nice quick read and easy to follow.
This novel is extremely readable -- I literally picked it up at 5pm and couldn't stop reading until I finished the book at 8pm. I predicted the ending, but I don't know if it's actually predictable or I'm just an adult woman who has read a lot of young adult books in her life. It was still compelling; I liked the one-sided epistolary prose interspersed with news broadcast transcripts. I thought the relationships and characters depicted were very realistic, and I liked that the vocabulary was current. For example, one of the protagonist's friends uses they/them pronouns, but it was done naturally, without calling special attention to that friend's gender identity. I will look for more by this author.
Nobody Knows But You is an enjoyable young adult thriller with a tense atmosphere and a twisty plot. I love books that feature unreliable narrators and this one hit the spot. I can't wait to see what else the author has in store for us in the future.
This YA mystery was intense. It follows the rambling mind of a sixteen-year-old girl, whose albeit not close and only somewhat friend dies at summer camp. The pieces of who did what, when, and why come through very slowly through the eyes/rumors of the other campers via interviews with the police and on social media. Even though I got the gist of what happened early on, the why it happened still kind of left me stunned. There is some light cursing, but nothing else unsavory. 15-17 year -olds would probably enjoy this read.
"The nail-bitingly intense story of a summer at camp that ends in a disturbing death - and depicts a powerful friendship that won’t ever be forgotten. Perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying and Broken Things.
Kayla is still holding on to Lainie’s secrets.
After all, Lainie is Kayla’s best friend. And despite Lainie’s painful obsession with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, and the ways he has tried to come between them, friends don’t spill each other’s secrets. They don’t betray each other’s trust.
The murder at the end of the summer doesn’t change all that.
Besides - Kayla knows that the truth is not the whole story."
Anyone else hoping this has serious Scream vibes?
This didn't grab me as much as I had been hoping considering it involves summer camp (I worked at camps all through college) and a mystery - one of my most favorite genres. And then throw in an (view spoiler) to boot and I'm usually all in! I became very tired of the letters to Lainie which seemed long and dull to me. Instead, I was looking forward to the chapters of statements to investigators or reporting on the trial. Obviously we have to mostly hear from Kayla as she was closest to Lainie and the most involved in whatever happened, but her voice didn't do anything for me. I'm also disappointed that I knew what had happened very early on. Not the specific details of the murder, but the killer and why. However, I can probably attribute that to the fact that I DO love mysteries and have read/watched a lot of them so it's difficult to fool me. A teen reader might be astounded.
Loved the story and the pace. A little bit of ways into the book I figured out what the ending would be but I still was shocked about how it happened. Definitely recommend!
I'm beginning to learn that I don't care for the kinds of stories that are solely letters to other people or just news clippings. It was still interesting but could've used more substance.
This was a good book and I enjoyed it. It's got pretty good twists and I didn't see the final twist coming.