Pretty Dead Queens

by Alexa Donne

The new homecoming queen is dead . . . and she's not the first unsolved murder at Seaview High. From the critically acclaimed author of The Ivies comes a nonstop YA thriller about a decades-old mystery, a copycat killer, and the teen who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth.

"Utterly savage." –Jessica Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of They’ll Never Catch Us

"Hand this fast-paced thriller filled with plenty of twists and drama to fans of Holly Jackson or Karen M. McManus." -SLJ

A 2023 Edgar Award Nominee!

After the death of her mom (screw cancer), seventeen-year-old Cecelia Ellis goes to live with her estranged grandmother, a celebrated author whose Victorian mansion is as creepy as the murder mysteries she writes. On the surface, life is utterly ordinary in the California coastal town . . . until the homecoming queen is murdered. And she’s not Seaview’s first pretty dead queen.

With a copycat killer on the loose, Cecelia throws herself into the investigation, determined to crack the case like the heroines in her grandmother’s books. But the more Cecelia digs into the town’s secrets, the more she worries that her own mystery might not have a storybook ending.

• ISBN10: 0593479823
• ISBN13: 9780593479827
• Publish Date: 4 October 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crown Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780593479827

Reviews

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I think I'm a little obsessed with all these YA thrillers! They seem to have really made a resurgence this year. Or maybe I'm wrong and an idiot who hadn't noticed all of these before the good girls guide to murder series. This category is turning into my comfort category of books that I read in one sitting and can really do no wrong. Pretty Dead Queens is no exception to this rule. I'm excited to be writing this review for you guys!

 

Pretty Dead Queens is a YA thriller that came out on the 4th of October! It's been published by Random House and is 333 pages long. This is not Alexa Donne's first book, and most of you will know her as the author of The Ivies, which was out in May 2021.

 

Cecilia moves to live with her grandmother after her mom passes away. As a copycat killer strikes again, she has to find out who killed the homecoming queen this time and if the original killer caught was really the right one.

 

It took me under 2 hours to read Pretty Dead Queens. It's a fun read with a dead girl set in a small town. At least the small town is in California. I loved loved loved the references that the author made to another book that was set in a small town, which I can guarantee all of you have read, watched the movie of, or at least heard off. If you haven't, then I believe you live under a shockingly dense rock or are a child who has no business being on the internet.

 

It was exciting to see how poisonous people can be on the inside and how much people are willing to overlook when they're dead. Motives can also be strange; sometimes, you just need to watch how people look when they die.

 

To be fair, while I think the above was pretty spoilery, the twists in the book are so good. I suspected one of them, but really the last one, which was a tad over dramatic, was something I just couldn't see coming at all!