Review of The Scammer, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Scammer

by Tiffany D. Jackson
read by January LaVoy

Quill Tree Books, 2025. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written December 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

The Scammer is another young adult thriller by Tiffany Jackson featuring a Black girl protagonist. Jordyn has decided at the last minute, against her parents wishes, to defer her Yale acceptance and attend a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. Once there, she quickly becomes firm friends with her suitemates.

But one of her new friends has a brother who recently got out of prison (wrongly accused, of course), and she asks to let him stay with them. Devonte is everything charming. He cooks for the girls, cleans for them, and starts giving life advice.

But the life advice accelerates to controlling every part of their lives, giving them a curfew, telling them what they can do, and who they can be around. What’s more, it spreads to more people on campus turning to this charming older man to know how they should live. And then he starts asking for money, so their new family can build a community together.

I have to say that the middle of this audiobook when Devonte was getting more and more controlling was difficult even to listen to. Jordyn does make at least one friend who helps her get her head clear – but of course it all leads up to a dangerous crisis. As has to happen in any good thriller.

So yes, here’s some gripping escapism with a side of cautionary tale. And a thriller with a less typical heroine in the spotlight.

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Review of Red Star Rebels, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Red Star Rebels

by Amie Kaufman
performed by Max Meyers, Jessica Almasy, and a full cast

Listening Library, 2026. 7 hours, 33 minutes.
Review written August 14, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred review

The audio production for this book is amazing. It’s to the level of a radio play. There’s even a music soundtrack throughout. Occasionally, when the music turned happy in the romantic parts, it felt a tiny bit hokey, but mostly it dialed my tension way up. At one point I turned it off a couple times to make sure that machine sound wasn’t coming from inside my own home. This was a good thing – you’re completely immersed in the story. This one was hard to stop at any point in the story, and had me so riveted, it maybe wasn’t the best background listening if I was trying to do anything else. (But I didn’t miss any turns or get into any accidents while driving, so it all worked out.)

Red Star Rebels is set in a United Nations station on Mars – one of the last and lowest budget bases that was built on Mars. We have two viewpoint characters. First is Cleo, who got to Mars as a hitcher when she was trying to escape debt collectors after her for medical debt from the illness that killed her father. Since Cleo isn’t registered to be there, she’s got tricks for places to hide and stashes of food. And a pressure suit in case there’s ever an evacuation – because the system doesn’t know she’s there and rovers won’t wait for her.

Our second protagonist is Hunter Graves. He’s the billionaire grandson of the man who got to Mars first and put a compound there, breaking rules, but also breaking new ground. Hunter didn’t let his mother and sister know that he was coming, and used his money to keep them from finding out. He has just arrived at the UN station and wants to arrange passage to the Graves compound, but is told that a dust storm will make it impossible to travel for a few days.

And then an alarm goes off. A voice repeats a message in several languages that everyone needs to get to the evacuation rovers because a toxin has been identified in the air, and the station is going to be vented. Trouble is, Hunter wasn’t registered yet, so the system doesn’t know he’s there, so the evacuation rovers for visitors don’t wait for him. Fortunately for him, after he puts out a Mayday call (blocked by the dust storm from anyone outside the station), a girl with red hair wearing a pressure suit comes to him bringing a second pressure suit. (And on the audiobook, her voice sounds like it’s coming from a microphone in a suit.)

But after Hunter thinks this girl Cleo has saved his life, the station doesn’t start venting after all. In fact, some Rovers pull up to the station on the opposite side from where the evacuees left. A group of people enter the station and come to the command center. Cleo and Hunter hear them say there are six hours left before everything blows, and they see them doing something with the computer system.

Hunter and Cleo don’t make their presence known right away. Can they figure out a way to escape the station before it gets blown up to erase the evidence? And what, exactly, are these people planning?

There are different phases to the story as Cleo and Hunter grapple with changing situations, revisions in their information, and a dawning knowledge of what the intruders are planning to do.

Meanwhile, Cleo has every reason to hate anyone from the Graves corporation, who produced the medicine that her father needed and couldn’t afford. And Hunter has every reason to hate hitchers, since a group of them from “Mars For All” killed his father. Nobody has ever been there for them before, but they may need to rely on each other to get out of this alive.

I don’t want to say much more than that except that the tension doesn’t let up for a minute. When you think they’ve overcome one obstacle, something new happens to threaten them. But as they’re working for survival, it turns out they’re both good at thinking on their feet. Cleo’s knowledge of the base – from living in secret for months – is crucial, and so is Hunter’s knowledge of the computer systems used by all the bases on Mars. And it’s an awful lot of fun to hear about.

The story was excellent and made me believe that could be what life on Mars is like in forty years, including the part about rich people not caring about the lives of others, sadly. I’m going to strongly recommend if you read this book, do it via audiobook. The production was that good. Be prepared for high tension, though!

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Review of Young World, by Soman Chainani

Science Fiction, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Young World

by Soman Chainani

Random House, 2026. 474 pages.
Review written June 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This novel is bonkers, chaotic, and far-fetched – but the truth is, I loved the wild ride.

The premise is that a 17-year-old named Benton Young, to impress an earnest girl, made a video that went viral and won the US presidency as a write-in. Okay, he didn’t get 270 electoral votes, and then there’s that little detail about it being unconstitutional – but politics got him actually in the White House. You see, his election started a global movement – a Young Revolution – and across the globe young people got put into positions of power. (The politicians were afraid of the movement and put the right pressure on the Supreme Court to say his election is okay. They’re planning to impeach him soon anyway.)

But being elected isn’t the same as wielding the power of the presidency. The powers that be don’t even want to let him appoint his own Cabinet – until he strikes a deal and gets his two best friends in.

But then the stakes move to a G-8 summit in Sweden. And it’s all about an island found in the Arctic among the melting ice caps that is claimed to be the ticket to great wealth for the country that claims it. But rumor has it, there’s a giant volcano under that island that could wipe out the planet.

So this is what’s being discussed when one of the leaders at the summit is murdered and the whole world thinks Benton did it. So for the rest of the book, he’s on the run across the globe and different powers are after him and trying to make deals with him and he can’t tell whom to trust or what to do. And that’s where it gets pretty chaotic at the end. I couldn’t completely picture what was happening in the big climactic scene.

But there’s lots and lots of action, along with plenty of thoughts about power and about what’s important. Benton comes to power because he sees the world as divided not by Red and Blue but by the Spend-Its and the Save-Its – the Save-Its being the young people who want to live in a world that’s going to last until they’re old. This book leaves you with lots to think about while you’re enjoying the wild ride.

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Review of Reasons We Break, by Jesmeen Kaur Deo

Contemporary, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Reasons We Break

by Jesmeen Kaur Deo

Hyperion, 2025. 406 pages.
Review written November 24, 2025, from a book sent by the publisher.
Starred Review
2025 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 More Teen Fiction

Good girl Simran tutored Rajan in math all through high school. She was the first math tutor he could tolerate. After high school, Rajan shows up in her life again as a mentee in a program for helping troubled youth with community service. The rumors in their Sikh community say that he killed someone. Rajan’s visiting his probation officer as scheduled and trying to stay clean.

Then his old gang picks him up to pull him back into the gang – and grabs Simran, thinking she’s his girlfriend, as leverage. But that ends up turning out the opposite of expectations, as Simran volunteers to replace the gang’s bookkeeper (who recently got arrested) just long enough to pay off Rajan’s debt, so he doesn’t have work for them and break the conditions of probation.

Of course, once Rajan finds out about that, he’s not going to stand by and let Simran be in danger. But Simran is already intrigued by the puzzle of trying to figure out a rival gang’s code.

One thing keeps leading to another, and we gain insight that everyone can have life events that break them and lead them to choices they might not otherwise have picked.

It was interesting reading this book at the same time I was reading Gregory Boyle’s book, Cherished Belonging. Gregory Boyle works with gang members in Los Angeles, and is incredibly good at seeing their good hearts – and showing those good hearts to his readers. This story was fiction, but it also takes a compassionate look at teens caught up in gangs and all the difficulties of getting out.

The book also gives insight into the Sikh religion and that immigrant community in British Columbia – while delivering a suspenseful thriller about people we come to care about.

JDeoWrites.com
HyperionTeens.com

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Review of The Woman in Suite 11, by Ruth Ware

Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

The Woman in Suite 11

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 15 hours, 11 minutes.
Review written December 5, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Woman in Suite 11 is Ruth Ware’s first sequel, a follow-up to The Woman in Cabin 10, set ten years later. The Woman in Cabin Ten was the first Ruth Ware book I listened to. It was 2018, when I was reading for the Newbery Award, and listening to a Ruth Ware thriller was the perfect way to cleanse my palate, as they’re pretty much the opposite of the children’s books I was reading for the award.

This follow-up was wonderful. I love that life is going well for Lo Blacklock. She’s happily married, living in New York City with her husband and two kids. But because of having kids and the unfortunate timing of the pandemic, her career as a journalist has stalled.

So Lo is surprised when she gets an invitation to the opening of a premier hotel in Geneva, owned by the Leidman group. Her husband urges her to go while he takes care of their two little boys. And Lo can visit her Mum in England on the way back.

But Lo is even more surprised when she sees three people who were on that fateful voyage of the Aurora ten years ago. And then when she gets summoned to owner Marcus Leidman’s room late at night – Suite 11 – she assumes it’s his eccentric way to finally grant her an interview. But the door is opened by the very same woman she saw in Cabin 10.

And from there? All hell breaks loose. Again there is murder before the book is over. Again there are very powerful people involved. Again there’s a mystery as to how it all went down – and this time Lo is a suspect, and she’s also keeping secrets.

I’ll say no more about the plot, but it keeps you going all the way. I kept checking how much of the audiobook was left to confirm that no, this seeming resolution probably wasn’t actually a resolution. And sure enough, there were new causes for tension all the way to the end.

Do read the The Woman in Cabin 10 first – you’ll enjoy this one all the more. I was so happy for Lo – her husband is awesome (and spoiler alert – he survives the book. It’s so good to see a wonderful supportive husband in a thriller, especially one who survives.), her kids are wonderful, she’s got her mental health under control, including no more drinking problem. When she talked about missing her little boys and had her husband let her listen to them sleeping, my own heart melted.

I have to say that I really do hope for Lo’s sake that she will not feature in any more thrillers. But if she does, I will want to be first in line to read them!

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Review of One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

One Perfect Couple

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay! With this book I’ve read all of Ruth Ware’s existing work – and this one felt like something new and had me hanging on every word.

Yes, this one is a thriller like all the others, and it’s going to end with the female main character in great danger. There’s always some question about who she can trust and where the danger lies, though in this case, that came to be obvious before the dangerous confrontation – it was more a question of would she survive the confrontation. (Though I will put it in “Mystery” along with the others.)

The book sets up with Lila, a research virologist, fretting over data that doesn’t give the results she wanted. And then her actor boyfriend Nico gets a big opportunity and wants her to come with him on a new reality TV show called “One Perfect Couple.” Five couples are going to be taken to a tropical island and given tasks to achieve. People will get eliminated after each task, and the producers will be encouraging some remixing of the couples.

Lila isn’t thrilled about the whole thing. But Nico is very much hoping it will be his big break as an actor. Their plan is that Lila will get knocked out early, and if Nico’s encouraged to spend time with other women, he assures her it will purely reflect his acting abilities – only for the camera.

But during all this set-up, the book begins each chapter with a radio distress call of someone from the island in the future, not too far ahead. They’re stranded, their water is running out, and people are dead and injured – so we’re fully warned that things are going to go terribly wrong.

And they do go terribly wrong. The island hosts a resort in construction and not yet open to the public. Their first night – after one person is eliminated – an enormous storm takes out power and the desalination plant. The boat where the staff of the show were staying had left to take the eliminated contestant back to the mainland – and it doesn’t return.

The storm kills a couple people, and then the group has to figure out how to survive until a boat comes – but that turns out to be much longer than they hope. So they need to ration food and medicine – and let’s just say there are power struggles and more people start dying.

And my goodness it had me avidly listening! Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant story to spend my time with, but I did like the characters and there were even some interesting insights into toxic relationships. But mostly, it was a thrilling story that got me wondering what I would do in that situation – and tremendously glad I’ll never get in that situation.

[It’s probably just me, but does anyone else wonder why someone on a tropical island wouldn’t try to make their own small desalination scheme by trying to evaporate sea water and catch the condensation? I understand you probably wouldn’t get a lot, but every little bit would help, and it seems easier than scaling coconut trees. Why didn’t they even try? That was my only niggling question – but I also had it when reading a different book about drought in California, so it was a persistent thought.]

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Review of The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense 0

The Lying Game

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2017. 13 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written August 27, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

I’m listening to too many Ruth Ware books too close together. I listened to my first one when I was on the Newbery committee reading only children’s books – and it was a perfect contrast. Now I confess I keep going because I’m a bit of a completist, and I know that I do enjoy her audiobooks. This one was still good, still got me listening avidly, full of tension – but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the others I’ve listened to.

The main obstacle? It’s hard for me to sympathize with liars. (Fictional liars cause so much trouble that could just be solved by telling the truth! Yes, this is a pet peeve.) Isa, the main character of this book, was part of a “lying game” with three other friends when she was away at boarding school. Kate was in charge of it, and awarded points if you fooled people, with different points for various levels of lying. But one of the big rules was that they didn’t lie to each other.

In the present, Isa gets a text from Kate, and she comes running – along with Thea and Fatima, back to Kate’s home on the coast next to the school. Isa brings her baby along, and lies to her partner and everybody else about why she’s visiting after fifteen years away. Supposedly, it’s to go to an alumni dinner at the school, but really it’s because the body the girls buried together has been found.

I always worry when the main character of a Ruth Ware book is in a happy relationship! Fortunately, Isa’s partner doesn’t die, but it’s definitely not smooth sailing. (See above about Lying.) And with Isa taking her baby everywhere, you’ve got to have great danger at the end of a thriller, and as feared, Isa’s baby is the one in danger.

But there’s twisty stuff going on finding out what happened fifteen years ago and who they can trust now and what part of the things even they thought about that body were truths and what part were lies. And can they keep the lies of the past from destroying their lives now?

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Review of The It Girl, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

The It Girl

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2023. 17 hours, 9 minutes.
Review written August 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Well, I have to confess – as I began listening to this audiobook, I was sure right from the start that I knew who the killer was and that I’ve been listening to too many Ruth Ware books. Reader, I was wrong. I’ll say no more except that she can still keep me guessing! And even when I thought I knew the solution, the story still kept me listening.

The It Girl is about a murder that happened ten years ago at an Oxford college to April Clarke-Cliveden, the roommate of Hannah Jones, at the end of their first year.

April was everything Hannah wasn’t, beautiful and rich and popular. She did have a habit of playing practical jokes that edged on mean-spirited, and she obviously wasn’t faithful to her boyfriend Will – a guy Hannah had a crush on – but April was vibrant and alive and drew a circle of friends around them.

As the book opens in the present, the man who was convicted for April’s murder, the creepy porter of their college, has died in prison, still maintaining his innocence. It all makes Hannah very uneasy, since she gave the evidence that put him away. Could she have been wrong?

We get the story told us “Before” and “After” – the story leading up to April’s death, their happy days at Oxford, and in the present, ten years later, with Hannah happily married to Will and expecting their first child. But a reporter who’s friends with one of their friends from Oxford gets under Hannah’s skin with the idea that maybe that porter wasn’t guilty after all.

And yes, Ruth Ware managed to surprise me. She tells a story so engaging it’s hard to stop listening, with characters you feel like you know, and then she adds a compelling mystery with of course danger to the main character when she learns too much, too late.

There are still some Ruth Ware books I haven’t read, and let’s see how long I can stand to wait before putting the next one on hold.

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In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review, Suspense 0

In a Dark, Dark Wood

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015. 9 hours, 35 minutes.
Review written July 27, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay, you can see I’m catching up on Ruth Ware thrillers. I discovered them during my year of reading for the Newbery committee — as we weren’t listening to audiobooks of eligible titles, and they are quite the opposite of children’s books. They’re also along the same lines as the romantic suspense books or Agatha Christie books I loved in high school – only in these, the girl doesn’t get saved by the romantic hero.

In this book the death doesn’t happen until halfway through the book, but here’s the set up: Our viewpoint character is Leonora Shaw, a young writer who lives alone and enjoys her solitude. Like most Ruth Ware main characters, Imogen Church makes her sound just a tiny bit neurotic, or at least afraid she’s neurotic. Leonora has been invited to a Hen Party for her best friend when she was at school, Claire, whom she hasn’t seen in ten years. (This seems to be the British name for a Bachelorette Party.)

Nora doesn’t know why Claire invited her to the Hen Party, but not to the wedding. But she makes a pact with another school friend, Nina, to go to the weekend together.

The weekend’s happening in a house with lots of huge windows down a long, rutted driveway in the middle of the dark, dark woods in winter. Nora, out for a run, sees Claire arriving and has a little time with her privately in the car – and learns that Claire is marrying James, Nora’s high school sweetheart, and the reason she hasn’t talked with Claire – or James – for ten years. Claire says she wanted to tell Nora face to face. Nora pretends to be nonchalant and happy for Claire, but she knows full well she hasn’t gotten over James – or the thing that happened to make her leave.

The other people at the party are the oddly intense Flo, Claire’s current best friend, Melanie, who’s left her six-month-old behind and is feeling anxious, especially when the phone goes dead in the snow, and Tom, a gay actor who’s friends with Claire because of her connections to theater.

Mind you, all of this set-up is interspersed with scenes of Nora in the hospital, with police by her door, trying to remember what happened and when things began to go so very wrong.

I was proud that I did figure out whodunit and why almost right away – I think I’m getting used to Ruth Ware’s style. But that didn’t spoil the fun as I knew Nora was going to get into a dangerous situation before she figured it out.

If you’re in the mood for a thriller, you can’t go wrong with these books. They generally involve a young woman getting into an incredibly intense situation and coming out the other side discovering she has more strength than she ever gave herself credit for.

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Review of Nine Liars, by Maureen Johnson

Audiobooks, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Nine Liars

by Maureen Johnson
read by Kate Rudd

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022. 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 3, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m happy that I’m caught up reading Maureen Johnson’s Stevie Bell books. They began with a trilogy, and teenager Stevie Bell looking into a long-ago mystery at Ellingham Academy, the elite private school she was attending in Vermont – with more people turning up dead in the present. After solving that mystery, Stevie has become internet famous as a detective. In The Box in the Woods, she solves another cold case at a camp over the summer – with new deaths, of course, and in this book there’s yet another cold case for Stevie to solve.

This time the mystery happened in England in 1995. In the present day, it’s November, and Stevie’s in school in Vermont, trying to keep a long distance relationship going with David, who is studying in London. Then he pulls strings to get Stevie and their friends a week in London in a custom study abroad program. No surprise that Stevie gets pulled into a cold case – this time it’s because of David’s English friend’s aunt. Also no surprise that not everyone involved in the present day investigation will stay alive.

I enjoyed the way the mystery was presented – with plenty of chapters taking us back to 1995 and the group of nine theater students who’d just graduated from Cambridge having a house party at a manor house – and having a wild time until two were found dead.

I know that Maureen Johnson has spent a lot of time in London, and her writing about the students in London brought me right back to London myself. I like the way she gives intriguing mysteries to these distinctive characters we’ve come to care about. So while you could read this book on its own – the mystery is self-contained – why would you want to tackle it without enjoying all the history of Stevie and David and their friends?

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