I didn't love this. It had a unnecessary amount of POV characters, and the killer's motive wasn't fleshed out enough to pack any real punch.

Well…I can hear choo choo sound of my approaching disappointment train! Another book kept me in limbo: neither I liked nor I hated it line.

I mostly enjoy whodunnit mysteries with multi POVS and plot line about prom queen who is found death lying in a ditch as the prom king is the person of the interest who insists he’s found her when he’s passing through with his car is intriguing enough to hook me up.

But: investigation process of the crime was a little nonsense. They blamed Mario as soon as he opens his mouth to tell them how he’s found the victim.

And the parents of the victim find out who’s arrested by their son who checked out the social media. Really?

The investigators are so ready to pin this up Mario ( math wizard, prom queen who’s been abused by the victim on social media: she even put worms inside his crown and she warned his date Elena how bad kisser he’s on twitter) from the beginning because he resembles a guy who seemed innocent but later they found out he was drug dealer who was the reason of several innocent deaths. Really?

And Lucas: Mario’s best friend is the only one who believed in his innocence, finding more concrete evidence than entire police department! Really?

And let’s not forget about Elena: she was the date of Mario at that night. Mario’s mother works for Elena’s father. Mario’s mother gets sad how Elena is depressed after her mother’s sudden left and putted pressure on her son to ask her for prom date. Sweet and people pleaser Mario couldn’t say no to her mom. When the police stopped the car of Mario, Elena was also in there, passed out, drunk. After they got arrested Mario, they easily let Elena go without further investigation! Really? They were at the same freaking car. Couldn’t they suspect she’s been faking her condition?

There are so many plot holes in here and the adults of the book acted so clueless from the beginning. I’m suspecting they were all seven years old kids disguised inside adult bodies!

Overall: the plot line, multi POV-Ed story telling, pacing were good things about my reading journey!

But plot holes made me exhausted. And I think I truly disliked the victim. After reading what she’s done, I even empathized with the perpetrator!

So I decided to give solid three stars! I wish I enjoyed my reading more! The plot line and beginning of the book were truly promising!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

Thank you Penguin Random House, Underlined and NetGalley for my e-ARC in exchange for the honest review.

When it comes to prom night every parents was praying, hoping that their kid was going home safe but Mrs. Starr was the unlucky parent. Because her daughter died and doesn’t know what happened yet.

Mario was just driving with Elana after the party, but then he saw something, get out of his truck and look what it is and then he saw Mirabelle’s body. After that he was accused of a murdered.

The book was a fast-paced. My one problem is that there’s a lot of pov’s in this book. But overall it was short and good.

I really thought I would love this book, because the premise sounded so so good.
But I ended up not really enjoying it. The story and the mystery are good and interesting. I actually liked these parts.
But I couldn’t get into the writing itself. There are like 10+ perspectives telling the story and the point of view changes like every four or five pages. My biggest problem: the voices of the point of views/characters were way to similar. I often ended up not knowing who’s point of view I was reading at the moment, because they felt pretty much the same. Even the adults point of views sounded exactly like the teenagers.
Some chapters/characters didn’t even contribute to the story and just made it Kind of messy for me.
I’m pretty sure, I would have enjoyed this book with just two or three point of views, but with this overload of too similar voices, it was just hard to read and follow.
I guess people who like this kind of style might enjoy this book, because the story itself is good. But I just couldn’t get into it.

3,5/5

I simply like to read about teenagers in things other than romance, and this was a good choise for me.

Mirabell is found dead on a ditch on her prom night, and the prime suspect is one of her classmates, Mario, the one who, with her, were named prom's king and queen.

Starting from there, the story gave us several point of views: Mirabell*s boyfriend, Mario's best friend, who wants to prove his innocence, the own Mario, his mother, his prom date, the detective of the case, and several others. That way, we can put the pieces together to find the whole truth of what happend that night.

It's, in general, a good book. You can't stop reading it because the mistery keeps you hooked trought the chapters.

However, it has A LOT of POV's, and it's all written in first person, so, changing from one narrator to other, can be a little uncomfortable and overwhelming, besides, everyone of them, every voice of the characters, it felt like the same voice, nothing made one of them stand out or be different from each other.

But, on the other hand, the characters in general felt very real, very human, dispite the fact that they were involve (in one way or another) to a murder. They were all just young people taking one bad decisions after another. I like the fact that Mirabell was, on a sort of way, a bad person and that didn't change just because she die, but at the same time, as it happens with death in real life, everyone just wanted to keep the good and the best of her.

The only ones I have a little complaint about, are the grown ups, specially the mothers and fathers of some of the involved; they were all, like, too chill or pasive, idk, with the circunstances. Like, if you know your teen son is in jail, you don't just gently stay in your house, thinking bad things, no, you go there and fight with the world if you have to for at leas be able to see and talk to him. Same if your daughter, after one of her classmate's was kill, says she's going out alone in her car; a normal father just say no and in the conmotion of the moment become very protective, not just like "ok, be back soon!". Things like that, little details I didn't like.

From the very beggining the murderer was very obvious, so I was hoping a plot-twits that turn everything upside down, because is a mistery book and you don't expect everything be that easy. The thing is, that there was a plot twits, it was given clue by clue, but I knew everything in the first one, haha, from there, it was predictable and nothing was shocking at all.

I like, anyway. It has a fresh narration, simple, it's the to-kill-time kind of book, perfect for disconnect for a while if you don't want anything too heavy to take on.

I'm torn on this book. On one hand, I couldn't put it down and it was incredibly fast-paced. On the other, I felt overwhelmed by the number of viewpoints and underwhelmed by the plot as a whole. The killer was too obvious, but yet their motive wasn't fleshed out enough. Additionally I thought it was weird that everyone loved Mirabelle, when she seemed like a total mean girl. It was all just really confusing. I might not be the target audience for this one though - it felt aimed towards the younger end of YA.

*Thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours, Underlined, and NetGalley for the gifted ARC*

This story is told from multiple viewpoints. It includes social media posts and newspaper articles. It tells about the murder of Prom Queen Mirabelle Starr.

Mario begins the story when he comes upon Mirabelle's body in a ditch. His date Elana is passed out in the passenger seat. The cops arrive really fast and first arrest Mario for contributing to the delinquency of a minor because his date had obviously had too much to drink.

We also hear from Parker who was Mirabelle's boyfriend except she broke up with him on prom night which led him to hit his grandparents' liquor cabinet. He wonders if he might have done something to Mirabelle and not remember. But he was sad not mad.

We hear from Mirabelle's brother Josh who knows some things about his sister that he isn't sharing with the cops. And we hear from Lucas who is Mario's best friend and begins his own investigation when he comes to believe that the police are so fixated on Mario that they aren't looking for the real murderer.

There are other viewpoints too - Mario's mom, Elana's, Zain's (the secret boyfriend0, the head detective's. All come together to gradually uncover what really happened to Mirabelle on prom night. It doesn't help the reader at all when it comes out that some of the characters are lying.

This was a nicely twisty thriller that will keep teens turning the pages to find the answers.

I got this off of Netgalley, these opinions are my own. I really enjoyed this book. I’ve been pretty interested in mystery novels lately and I thought Lisa Schroeder took a bit of a different route with it. Rather then following one or two characters there are quite a few narrators here and some that wouldn’t fall into the typical idea of a protagonist but it allowed for the reader to see the case from all sides! I loved that even though we saw it from all sides the intrigue was still there and there were still twists and turns! The Prom Queen is murdered on Prom Night, who did it? The Prom King? Her Boyfriend? What secrets did she hide? Close to the end I put some of it together but couldn’t quite figure out how it happened and was definitely not expecting the full outcome! I really enjoyed this and am excited to read it again when it comes out!

Prom is supposed to be a great night full of fun as you make memories. When Mario is nominated Prom King he felt like he was on top of the world. He had come to the prom with a beautiful girl who seemed to like him. However, once the prom is over everything goes wrong. Mario finds a classmate, the prom Queen, dead at the side of the road and with no real evidence he seems like the main suspect. As the investigation unravels there are strange connections, clues and double lives that lead to a shocking ending! A mystery all teens will enjoy!

A Prom horror book? Yes!
I read this in one sitting and the text/social media posts splattered throughout the format provided another angle on what was taking place as well as drawing the reader in as a witness.
3.5 stars... I spotted the "bad apple" from the moment they were introduced and some of the delayed responses don't stick with the personalities built throughout the rest of the novel; however, the suspense was good as the motive and method came to light ...so rounding up to 4 stars.
This will appeal to RL Stine and Christopher Pike fans: Not a literary masterpiece, but YA readers will love it.

As a horror-obsessed Halloween gal, I love October reads. This was really fun, and felt like an R.L. Stine-type. Prom-themes are a great setting for some scary books. Mario was a great character.

The small reveals and variety of perspectives made this quick read really pop. Except. There is one character who just doesn't make any damn sense. In my opinion, he spoils it for the rest of them.