You'll Be the Death of Me Review

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.

Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out--he's been working two jobs since his family's business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up.... again.

So when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They'll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they've barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say...

Until they spot another Carlton High student skipping school--and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it's about to get worse.

It turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common. They all have a connection to the dead kid. And they're all hiding something.

Now they're all wondering--could it be that their chance reconnection wasn't by chance after all?

From the author of One of Us Is Lying comes a brand-new pulse-pounding thriller. It's Ferris Bueller's Day Off with murder when three old friends relive an epic ditch day, and it goes horribly--and fatally--wrong.

General Impressions

I think I saw the author describe You'll Be the Death of Me as Ferry Bueller's Day Off with murder and it's absolutely right.

This was my second story by Karen M. Macmanus after The Cousins which I thought was good but not enough to justify how adored the author is. I started this book as my second chance to be amazed and reader, I was.

When three teens decide to cut class together, it's more than a way to try to reconnect after years of drifting apart or repeat the day that made them friends in the first place but an excuse to avoid their lives for a day. Unfortunately, some of their problems had the same idea and they come across the body of another student which could spell trouble for all of them in different ways. They are then forced to embark on a search for clues that can exonerate them before their parents hear about it.

Despite that short summary, this is not the kind of story where everyone has useless parents and has to fend off by themselves, it's just that the action is packed in a single day and they are unaware of the stakes at play, thinking their parent's reaction and punishment is the worst that can happen.

Something I noticed in The Cousins and that maintained itself here was that the author features inequality, sexism, homophobia and sexism without making them the focus of her story, which I really liked. Instead, she simply portrays them as factors that can influence or derail a situation in different ways depending on the character: a cop or security guard is not a problem for the white characters but when their POC friend is with them they all have to make sure he doesn't become a target or if the worst happens, is not the one blamed for everything. At the same time, they have to discard their own prejudices in search of the truth.

The biggest reason I devoured this book was the way the three main characters interacted. Karen is a master of writing people that like each other but might not understand why other people don't have the same options they have: a character from a rich family isn't aware of their privilege when it comes to simply not having to worry about money. Those misunderstandings and initial lack of communication resulted in characters being tentative and resorting to manipulation or outright threats in order to force the others to help them. So the reader is forced to watch these characters struggling between being kind and supportive to people they still care for and convincing the others they have a common goal by whichever means necessary.

The nerve-wracking nature of that situation creates pressure enough that all kinds of secrets come to the surface which will ultimately decide their future when it comes to the murder and their personal relationships. The story was able to balance the nostalgia for simpler times with a desire to grow up and make the right decisions to solve their problems.

Lastly, while this book features a lot of important themes I would like to focus on a single one: the presence of a sexual predator and the way that their looks and gender influenced the way they were seen throughout the story. I liked that the author portrayed both the way the victim and other people saw the incident differently, depending on their own beliefs and prejudices but also made the reader question and judge the situation for themselves.

Conclusions

I devoured this book and can now call myself a Macmanus' fan without reserve. I need a sequel and movie adaptation for tomorrow because that ending was all I needed. For now, the 'One of Us is Lying' tv series will have to do, I guess.

Thank you to Penguin UK for sending me this proof.

Rating: 4.5/5