I enjoy the Riley Donovan character very much, mostly because she doesn’t go looking for trouble and it finds her anyway.
In this book, a girl who believes she’s going to be a suspect asks Riley for Help and shortly afterwards that girl is arrested for murder. But things are not adding up so Riley keeps digging. Great light young adult mystery series with nothing inappropriate. ( )

Received this from Early Reviewers. Apparently this is the third in a YA mystery series. I started this book thinking I wouldn't like it. I'm pretty disappointed in the state of YA books being put out these days. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This book was really pretty good. Quick, easy read and fun. Of course I'm past being the intended audience of these books but this took me back to my days reading Hardy Boys mysteries. I could really see this being a movie or television series, I'm surprised that it hasn't yet. I am looking forward to reading more of Riley Donovan's adventures. ( )

Reviewed for netgalley. I haven't read any other Riley Donovan mysteries but that didn't matter as the first couple of pages had you up to speed with Riley, her aunt who is a cop and her buddies who help her solve crimes. In this one, we join Riley and co as part of a community line search for a missing girl from their school. Unfortunately, one of the searchers soon finds her bludgeoned to death in a long grass paddock and it appears that Carrie, who was a rival for a college scholarship with the dead girl is the prime suspect. Riley isn't convinced and starts to do some background investigating.
Sort of like an American older and modern version of Nancy Drew, I think students will love this as they follow Riley and try to work out the murderer's identity. I will look into the others in the series for purchase at my Library. ( )

Like Far Above, which I reviewed in September 2016, Out of Tune is another well written mystery novel directed at younger teens. The mystery is engrossing and, despite initial appearances, the murderer is not who you think, but the tracks are there so the conclusion is not just pulled out of thin air.
Riley Donovan has gained a reputation by this book so the suspect asks her to look into it. Riley is smart and inquisitive.
If you have a young fan of mysteries and reading, I would definitely direct them toward this series. ( )

This is a nice little murder mystery.

I know that sounds weird–"nice" and "murder mystery" aren't paired very often. But the truth is that Out of Tune is just the sort of novel I needed: a pure mystery, with a violent crime but no gory/explicit content. The basic scenario (a high school student enlisted to investigate the murder of a female fellow student who appears to be a "golden child") at first reminded me a lot of the much-gorier Running Girl by Simon Mason, but Out of Tune is frankly a little more my speed in the violence department. It's like an Agatha Christie murder mystery: the story starts with the crime, and then follows the main character as she tracks down the clues. We get a description of the crime scene in one of the beginning chapters but not much more than that. Actually, now that I think about some of Agatha Christie's book, this is probably actually a step down from those even.

I feel like so many of the murder mysteries I've read lately focused more on character drama (most of which didn't even wind up being relevant to the investigation), so I really appreciated how focused Out of Tune was. McClintock never forgets that she's writing a murder mystery, not a small-town drama. Granted, that does come at the expense of getting to know some of the side characters very well–a feat that's made doubly hard because you're expected to already know a bunch of the characters from the earlier books in the "Riley Donavan" series–but I personally didn't really mind focusing on the clues rather than on the characters pursuing them.
The reason I love Agatha Christie's novels is because she so perfectly blends interesting characters with fascinating crime investigations. While I've yet to find a murder mystery that does both of these areas as masterfully as she does, I'm finding that I much prefer the ones that err on the side of the crime investigations. This is the case of Out of Tune, which wound up being a perfectly satisfying who-dunnit with a logical, yet suprising, reveal–and a protagonist I still know little about. And I am perfectly okay with that.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )