Challenge Corner discussion

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone's declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself.

Starting this today or tomorrow.

~12% - (view spoiler)[This is starting off slow and the setting does seem off compared to One of Us Is Lying. A creepy town with a lamely creepy amusement park is different from what I expected. (hide spoiler)]

~50% - (view spoiler)[I'm enjoying this one a lot. There's a lot that doesn't appear in your typical mystery, and I really like it. For a small town mystery it doesn't seem exaggerated, at least not so overly so that it doesn't make sense. I also do like the representation of twins through multiple families, I always love twin dynamics and I like Karen McManus's representation. I write twins a lot myself and I enjoy seeing them represented in a similar way as I write them, with the significance of multiple sets of twins.

It was pretty obvious from the start that Ellery and Malcolm were going to get together, although Malcolm still seems like an unreliable narrator and I'm not sure what he's hiding or if we can fully trust him. Brooke as well, I'm not sure what's up with her or why she (view spoiler)[was the first to disappear (hide spoiler)]. I think if my family had ever ended up in Echo Ridge we would have moved immediately after realizing the thrill park powers the culture. (hide spoiler)]

~2/3 done - (view spoiler)[Okay, I had some suspicions about Katrin, but I wanted to say they were more about Peter...but I guess Peter didn't have a stake in anything. And then there's Ryan Rodriguez. What's his deal? Clearly he was seeing Lacey on the side but...I don't know. Could they have been working together? For what? What is Katrin's connections to the events of previous years? (hide spoiler)]

80% ish - (view spoiler)[Okay, the thought that it was Peter did go through my mind, but I didn't actually entertain it. Damn. (hide spoiler)]

FINISHED - (view spoiler)[I didn't love that ending. It kind of just came up out of the blue and disconnected all the things that had been previously connected.

And then there was that last line. What does that mean? (view spoiler)[Was Sadie having an affair with Peter as well? (hide spoiler)]

In terms of books that represent nontraditional families, though, this is definitely a step in the right direction. (view spoiler)[If only the stepfather hadn't turned out to be the murderer. (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]