Chloe moved to California a year before college to live with her childhood friend and mother’s best friend so she could get residency before she started her dream – transferring to film school. Everyone knows the best film schools are in California, so Chloe is on cloud nine when she lands from her long plane ride at LAX. That is, until she realizes the jet lag from her flight might have fast-forwarded her into a horror film before she even got to 12th grade.
Chloe is the new girl around the city and doesn’t know anybody when she goes to a school party by the beach with Jake and his girlfriend, Kate. When she finds Lora dead on the beach, she only knows it’s Lora because of her blue scarf and a minor introduction from Jake a couple of minutes beforehand. Unfortunately, her lack of knowledge leaves the cops confused and hopeless. But there was someone else who was paying really close attention to Chloe and won’t let her off the hook so easily. Needless to say, she doesn’t make the best first impression in school, or on California, since the dramatic death is plastered all over the news the next day.
Chloe had a sense that she was being watched after she found Lora, and she also has an inkling that the murderer could very well be one of the people she just recently met. Instinctively she knows Jake couldn’t have done it, even though she hasn’t seen him or talked to him since the 6th grade. He may still be the sweetheart she remembered him to be, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in danger. After another girl is found slugged and murdered in a school locker, nobody seems to have an alibi. Therefore everybody is a suspect, and Chloe knows the murderer is definitely after her next due to the elaborate messages being left for her that cannot be classified as mere high school pranks.
Could it be Jake, because she really doesn’t know him anymore and therefore doesn’t know what he’s capable of? Was it Grey, the guy who seems a bit too nice to be as sneaky as he is? Was it Emma, the outcast in the school? Was it Kate, because she is jealous and a bit two-faced? How is it that Chloe landed in California and within her first steps on the beloved beach trips over the most popular girl in school, blank-eyed and cold-fleshed? Was she somehow connected to these people whom she learned the names of after she stared into those dead eyes?
This story is all over the place in the best way possible. I didn’t know who did it the entire time, and even when the blurry story was starting to clear up there were still a few questions that left me feeling haunted. If you are ready to stretch your mind this thriller is definitely worth the ride.
Rating: 8.5/10
Source: NetGalley
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