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.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/scammer.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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