Liz LawsonRecensioni

This was really fun and the narration was fab. Hope this series gains a strong readership among the yoof!

Cute

I ended up DNFing this book around the 50% mark for a number of reasons. The first was the amount of language and the second was that it was slow. This book started out promising but my hopes were let down quickly. I understand that the characters were grieving, but they were still wallowing in self-pity and woe-is-me.
All and all, I'm a bit disappointed by this book because I was hoping for better.

Rating: 2 Stars
Content: No Rating

*I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. All thoughts are my own and a positive review was not required.

The Agatha's' was one of my best reads of 2023 so I pre-ordered the sequel, 'The Night In Question' in the hopes of continuing the experience that I got from reading the first book.

By the time I was twenty-five per cent through the book, I realised that I wasn't going to get the exceptional read that I was looking for.

The writing and the narration are still good. As before, the carefully crafted differentiation between the voices, thought processes and expectations of Iris and Alice make the book richer.

So why did I set it aside?

The basic premise of the book didn't grab me. Maybe it's just me but the whole spooky castle from which a 1940s movie star fell to her death felt too contrived. It put me at a distance from the young people in the present-day timeline.

I also bumped into the typical second-book problems: not enough was new and what was familiar had changed into something less exciting. In the first book, the relationship between Alice and Iris was emerging and was often at risk. In this book they're friends, (well mostly) and that took the edge off things.

I also didn't like that the idiot detective from the first book remains as stupid and intractable as ever. For me, this turned him into a comic book character.

Perhaps I've become a less patient reader this year, standing as I am in the shadow of a mountain of books that I want to read but while I'm sure that if I'd finished the book I'd have been giving it a 'perfectly satisfactory' three-star rating, I didn't want to spend the hours it was going to take to get there.

Seamless continuation of the uneven alliance between Iris and Alice as they try to figure out not only their friendship, but two more crimes. One is the possibility that a young starlet's death in 1949 wasn't accidental, the other a near fatal attack on one of what Alice calls the Mains-rich and privileged teens at their school. Even though it looks at first like an open and shut case, the more the two dig, the murkier things become. The eventual solution of both crimes involves more Agatha Christie inspired detective work, deception, and numerous tight situations. This is another dandy YA mystery. With one other unsolved murder mentioned in both books, there's room for another book and I'd love to have that happen.

Nice tribute to classic mystery characters and authors, wrapped around a story of a girl who has huge feelings of abandonment, another who alternates between a sense of invisibility and vulnerability. Lots of twists and complex characters make figuring out who the killer was, a most enjoyable challenge. I immediately ordered the sequel to continue the fun.

A solid sequel, enjoyed it

Solid ya mystery will read the next one. A few eyerolls.

I think i choose the wrong time to listen to this book but i did really like it!! I enjoyed the mystery and the story but i felt at times the story was harder to follow. I thought the mystery elements had more stakes to them for sure and this book had more consequences and i really liked seeing all the side characters again, def exicted to read more in this series soon!!

* I got this book for review*
I really enjoyed this read!! It was a quick read and one that i really enjoyed. It gave me massive nancy drews vibes and also a true YA Mstery. It was quick read. I also loved the friendship that was at the heart of this read! I also enjoyed how this book dealt with harder topcis! It was quick read ad one that i really enjoyed the side characters. I woudl love to see more books set in this world!!

I think i choose the wrong time to listen to this book but i did really like it!! I enjoyed the mystery and the story but i felt at times the story was harder to follow. I thought the mystery elements had more stakes to them for sure and this book had more consequences and i really liked seeing all the side characters again, def exicted to read more in this series soon!!

* I got this book for review*
I really enjoyed this read!! It was a quick read and one that i really enjoyed. It gave me massive nancy drews vibes and also a true YA Mstery. It was quick read. I also loved the friendship that was at the heart of this read! I also enjoyed how this book dealt with harder topcis! It was quick read ad one that i really enjoyed the side characters. I woudl love to see more books set in this world!!

This YA Mystery book really surprised me. I didn't think that plot was going to be that entertaining and that it would be somewhat predictable. But the reality is that this book really surprised me left and right even down to the ending of the book.

I really enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Definitely worth the read!

Welcome to Castle Cove, an affluent little town on the California coast, where popular teen Brooke Donovan has just fallen to her death on the cliffs overlooking the beach. Or was she pushed? Alice, Brooke's ex-best friend, armed with a recent Agatha Christie obsession, is determined to discover the truth. And Iris, Alice's tutor and unwilling partner in crime-solving, sure could use the reward money -- she's not wealthy like Alice and Brooke, and she really wants to find a way out of this town for her and her mom. But what can a couple of teenage girls do when the cops have already pinned the blame on the wrong person?

I had fun reading this YA mystery. I figured out whodunit before the reveal, but there was plenty to enjoy along the way in terms of clues and character interactions. The writing is solid but not stellar. I enjoyed all of the Christie references. All in all, a decent book if you're into teen mysteries.½

I itched to buy ‘The Agathas’ when I first saw it. The cover was amusing and the title was intriguing. My finger hovered over the ‘Add to basket’ button. I didn’t buy it because it had two red flags. Firstly, it’s written by two authors. I know that can work, Ilona Andrews and James S A Corey prove that, but it often doesn’t. The second red flag was the Young Adult label. I’m just too old for most young adult books, especially ones set in American High Schools which are as remote from my personal experience as attending Hogwarts and even harder to believe in. Eventually, positive reviews from people who I trust tempted me into givng 'The Agathas' a try and I'm very glad they did.

'The Agathas^ was a 'Wow!' of a book. Pure fun from beginning to end.

All the High School tropes from Veronica Mars were there but they were transformed by how well the two main characters, Alice and Iris are drawn and by the way the plot drives the development of their unlikely relationship. It also helped that Alice and Iris had both watched Veronica Mars and were aware of the parallels.

Then there's the Agatha Christie overlay, which is introduced because Alice spent part of the previous summer reading Christie's books. It decorates the plot with Christie quotes and encourages Alice to believe in the viability on amateur sleuthing. It also delivers the occasional Easter Egg like naming the school counsellor Westmacott, which was one of Christie's lesser-known pen names.

What pulled me into the book was that it was told from two first-person points of view in alternating chapters. This gave me an intimate picture of how two girls at the same school: Alice, recently exiled from the elite inner circle of rich kids and Iris, a high-achiever from a poor home who is part of a group of self-declared oddballs who are virtually invisible to the elite, see themselves and each other. Having two points of view allowed more action to be covered and for each of the girls to have a different take on what was going on. It was also an effective way of adding to the tension by flipping points of view at key moments. I loved that each of the girls had a distinctive voice and way of thinking. I listened to the audiobook version where the 'two voices' aspect of the story was highlighted by having two narrators, one for Alice and one for Iris.

The mystery that Alice and Iris eventually become invested in solving is complex enough to be interesting without being too complex to be plausible. The mystery only provides half of the framework for the book. The other half comes from the slow reveal of the recent histories of Alice and Iris, both of whom are hiding secrets about things in their lives that make them unhappy and sometimes, a little ashamed.

As Iris and Alice gather evidence to solve the mystery and as they learn more about each other, they each realise how different the reality of the lives of the students around them are from the image the students project.

To me, this was the best kind of Young Adult book. The teenagers sounded and acted like teenagers and they remained the driving force for the plot but circumstances forced them to take a more adult view of events. It also helped that the adults who involved themselves were credible and did sensible things rather than being presented as obstacles to be overcome or worked around. Even the police, who were not sold on the idea of teenage amateur sleuths working on a murder case, especially ones who were closely linked to the case.

'The Agathas" was an excellent read and a wonderful audiobook. I've already downloaded the second book, 'On The Night In Question'.

Two high school students are thrown together in an unlikely partnership: Alice is one of the Rich Kids. Last year when basketball star boyfriend broke up with her for her best friend, she disappeared, launching a massive hunt for her, and becoming a notorious sensation when she showed up completely fine and refusing to talk about it five days later. Iris lives on the other side of the tracks and tries her best to stay under the radar. She’s a good student, keeps to herself, and doesn’t mind that no one seems to notice her, since that makes it easier to keep her abusive father a secret. These two are forced to start hanging out together when the school counselor assigns Iris to be Alice’s tutor. When Alice’s former best friend goes missing and then her ex-boyfriend is accused of murdering her, Iris and Alice start poking around to find out what really happened.
A solid YA mystery with all sorts of great references to Christie and her books. I figured out the culprit before the end, but still enjoyed the process immensely.

It’s been awhile since I read the first book, so it took a moment to get the secondary characters sorted in my mind, especially since this starts at a party so a lot of familiar names are immediately thrown at you, but it wasn’t too long before I settled in once more, again enjoying Alice and Iris’s friendship and the way the various mystery threads gradually wove together.

My very minor issues with this one are similar to the minor issues I had with book one, there’s a tendency to recap information rather than trusting that the reader understood/remembered what they read. There were also moments here and there where you might need to suspend a little disbelief but I imagine that’s the case with most mysteries involving amateur sleuths, access to certain clues, putting themselves in precarious situations/wriggling out of them, withholding/taking evidence with little or no consequence, getting away with that kind of stuff is sometimes necessary for this kind of story even if you don’t entirely buy it. But like I said, those are minor issues, the entertainment value easily overrides any of that.

As much as I did enjoy the mystery here, it’s lead characters Alice and Iris who will always keep me coming back for more of this series. While this sequel didn’t show quite as much of Iris’s homelife as the first book did, I liked the realistic handling of where she’s at emotionally, that the scars of what she experienced with her abusive father haven’t magically healed in his absence. I also liked seeing Alice interact with her parents, more than that though I just love the direction Alice is headed in as a person and her potential career going forward, fingers crossed that this series lasts so long that we get to see that career happen, there are so many YA authors now writing adult books, too, so how fantastic would it be to see Alice and Iris age up over many books into adulthood?

I reach for YA fiction when I'm in need of an escapist read. I've been waiting for The Night in Question - the second 'Agathas' book from Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson.

The first book (The Agathas) was so much fun to read, relive my teenage angst, and provided a nice murder mystery to try and solve before the final pages. (I love channeling my inner Nancy Drew). But it's Agatha Christie that is the inspiration for our lead characters Alice and Iris, and the rest of their cadre. WWAC do? The Castle Cove police are sloppy and take the easy way to a closed case. So our amateur investigators employ their own methods of detection.

This time 'round, the body is found at a school dance that was held at the home of a wealthy local family. The problem is that there's at least 150 possible murderers. The mansion is also the home to a historic murder that had a questionable resolution. Again, Glasgow and Lawson have created a'not so easy to solve' case. There's many a red herring on that garden path to the last chapters. Every time I thought I had sussed out the whodunit, a new piece of evidence changed my guess.

Take the time to read the quotes at the top of each new chapters. Some are from Agatha Christie and some are from a 1940's film star. Each one ties into the chapter it heads.

The characters are so well done and readers will be drawn to them. (Iris is my fave) The authors have really captured the teen vibe in terms of dialogue, actions, emotions and life in general. The setting is well described and easy to imagine. (Yup, a bit of a Riverdale feel) The murder is cunningly crafted and not easily solved. Loved it all!

And my fingers are crossed - I hope there's a third book!

If you liked The Agathas, you will enjoy The Night in Question, the second book in the series. Alice escapes a party at the Levy Castle to explore its many rooms and secret passages, only to stumble upon a crime. Certain that the police are looking at the wrong person, Alice and Iris decide to find the attacker themselves. This time they find that the crime they are investigating may have a connection to the deaths of two movie stars in 1940s, one of which fell to her death at Levy Castle. Filled with references to Agatha Christie and her books, this detective novel provides plenty of clues, red herrings, and surprises. Agatha Christie would approve.

Many thanks to Libro.fm and Penguin Random House for an advance audiobook of this book.

Cw: School shooting, loss of loved ones, PTSD, anxiety, survivor guilt, excessive drinking at parties.

I am exhausted.

There was so much anger and hurt and grief and guilt and hope. I was literally feeling a strong emotion for about 80% of this novel. Hence my current wrung out state. I confess that some of that emotion was actually annoyance. May was a very angry person for most of the first half of the novel and she was honestly quite unlikeable. Yes, I know it was because of the guilt and PTSD but that didn't make it easier to read. However, I grew to care about her and Zach as they struggled with their difficult family situations and with the violent act that connects them. This was a well paced novel that I read over one day because it was such a compelling read. There was so much going on in this novel but each subplot felt complete, like it had just the right amount of airtime so to speak. These then connected together in a way that flowed seamlessly to create quite a layered story. It's quite a skilful writer who can pick up threads of different subplots here and there and weave then together without creating jarring moments. The end was a moving tribute to the survivors of violent crime and the families of the victims. I'll definitely read more from this author.

When a teenage girl disappears in Castle Cove, two girls from different socio-economic backgrounds team up to solve the mystery.

I was expecting a greater degree of social commentary from something described as “Part Agatha Christie, part Veronica Mars” but I guess that’s the “part Agatha Christie” part -- Christie was not much into critiquing privilege and challenging the status quo.

That said, this was much appreciated entertainment when I was in bed with COVID. Would read any sequels.

Advance copy from NetGalley

3.5 stars

I enjoyed the alternating POVs in this YA mystery. I loved Alice and Iris, and I hope to see them solve more mysteries in future books!

The setting reminded me of Veronica Mars—the wealthy community and its dark secrets and one of the main characters an outcast from the most popular group in school. Alice’s obsession with Agatha Christie was a fun element to the story, and I suspect there are Easter eggs for Christie fans sprinkled throughout the book. Reading this makes me want to bump some Christie up my TBR pile.

The mystery was a tricky one, and I never came close to guessing who the murderer was. I wasn’t thrilled with the lengths Alice and Iris went to in their investigation, and I felt like Iris’s roller skating friends could have been developed more. I loved that they hung out at a roller rink, though.

I haven’t read that many YA mysteries, but this was a fun one, and I hope it’s the start of a series.

A book about survival, the survival of those left behind. How do you learn to move on? How do you find your way in a new normal? How do you learn to forgive in the aftermath in a tragedy? This is what the two characters, May and Zach learn to do, together. May lost her brother, Zach's mom is defending May's brother's killer. How do you come together and put that behind you? Was May really "the lucky one"? She has to learn to live with survivor's guilt and that's not something easy to do. This was an intense story, one that after I finished, I needed to take a bit of a break from reading. It stabbed me to the core. The writing made me feel both character's pain.

How do you move on when you are holding on to so much anger? This is a heartwrenching, raw, intense story of survival. The story takes place 10 months following the shooting, focusing on May, the lone survivor of a school shooting, and Zach, the son of the attorney who has chosen to represent the shooter. Using both characters' POV, the story goes back and forth through each of their experiences and how they learn to move forward, together, after such a horrific event. May needs to learn to control her anger, which stems from her guilt at being the only survivor and questioning the "why". Zach's life took a 180 when his mother decided to take on the role of the Defense attorney for the alleged shooter. He has to learn to navigate a world where everywhere he turns, someone is taunting him, due to the choices of his mother. By some strange twist sick fate, the two are brought together to learn how to navigate these new waters. In the end May learns that she is not the only one who is hurting from this tragedy and that she must learn to move on, that, as cliche as it sounds, life does move on. The sub-characters of Conor and Lucy helped drive the book, providing humor and heart. It was a very different take on school shootings, providing a look at those left behind and what it takes to move on.

Modern day YA Agatha Christie detectives try to solve the mystery of who killed Brooke Donovan. The Agathas, Alice and Iris, are on a mission to figure it out, with the help of the Zoners. Told from dual perspectives of Iris and Alice, this story keeps you guessing. Did Coach kill his own daughter? Was it someone unknown? Was it her boyfriend Steve? With hints & “rules” from the mistress of mystery, Agatha Christie, the girls do a deep dive of all possible suspects, with fingers pointing at the most obvious, but is it? Definitely a story for those wanna be detectives!