Frozen Beauty by Lexa Hillyer (review)

While the Malloy sisters consider themselves close, they have their secrets, and it seems as though oldest sister Kit’s have gotten her killed. The main suspect in her murder is their neighbor Boyd—his pickup was where her body was found—but Tessa refuses to believe that their childhood friend could be capable of taking Kit’s life, and she’s unconvinced by kid sister Lilly’s claim that she saw Boyd and Kit fighting the night before her death. Tessa begins her own investigation, and what she finds casts a shadow on Kit’s golden girl reputation and threatens Tessa’s friends, family, and life. Narration moves among timelines and perspectives in this evocative mystery, with Tessa relaying the present while diary entries by Lilly recount the events that led up to the tragedy. Lilly comes off as both infantile and selfish, and she is frankly offered little redemption by the book’s end, but the entries themselves reveal information that readers will only later recognize as important through Tessa’s investigation, resulting in an engrossing puzzle that can only be pieced together by following both girls’ accounts. The ultimate revelation of the culprit feels a bit generic, but there’s still an enticing thrum of darkness here as the book contemplates what happens when a good girl like Kit gets the chance to be bad.