The Amateurs by Sara Shepard (review)

The horrific murder of Helena Kelly has been a cold case for nearly five years, but Helena’s younger sister Aerin can’t let it go. In desperation, the now seventeen-year-old Aerin posts a cry for help on Case Not Closed, a message board where amateur sleuths try to solve old cases. Aerin’s a little shocked, though, when two kids nearly her own age, Seneca Frazier and Maddox Wright, show up on her doorstep, claiming to have information. Along with Maddox’s friend Brett, the group hunts down leads that take them all the way from Dexby, Aerin’s wealthy town, to the seedy streets of New York, and back to the homes of Dexby’s elite families. Chapters focalize through each of the four teens at different times, and the characters manage to just stretch out of their central casting personas. Everyone here is beautiful, though, and everyone here wants to have sex with everybody else, so the various tangential storylines of who is going to sleep with whom detract from the intriguing mystery. Red herrings are placed well enough that readers will surely be pulled toward them, but the ultimate revelation of the culprit feels like a copout, a gotcha moment that’s both inauthentic and unsubstantiated by the preceding plotline. Despite the flat ending, the story gains impact from the tragedy of Helena’s death and the search for the killer; this might therefore be an easy pick for fans of Shepard’s popular Pretty Little Liars or St. Claire’s They All Fall Down (BCCB 2/15).