The Meadowbrook Murders Jessica Goodman

by Jessica Goodman
The Meadowbrook Murders Published by Penguin on February 4, 2025
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories, Young Adult Fiction / School & Education / Boarding School & Prep School, Young Adult Fiction / Thrillers & Suspense / Crime
Pages: 336
Find the Author: Website, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
Goodreads

"The perfect dark academia read, filled with murder, twists, a jaw-dropping mystery and very privileged people doing deliciously bad things." —Danielle Valentine, New York Times Bestselling author of Two Sides to Every Murder

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of They Wish They Were Us and The Counselors, comes a page-turning murder mystery set at a prestigious New England boarding school about how telling the truth can come at a deadly price.

Secrets don't die.

It’s the first week of senior year at Meadowbrook Academy. For Amy and her best friend Sarah, that means late-night parties at the boathouse, bike rides through their sleepy Connecticut town, and the crisp beginning of a New England fall.

Then tragedy strikes: Sarah and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in their dorm room. Now the week Amy has been dreaming about for years has turned into a nightmare, especially when all eyes turn to her as the culprit. She was Sarah’s only roommate, the only other person there when she died—or so she told the police to cover for her own boyfriend’s suspicious whereabouts. And even though they were best friends, with every passing day, Amy begins to learn that Sarah lied about a lot of things.

Liz, editor of the school newspaper and social outcast, is determined to uncover the truth about what happened on campus, in hopes her reporting will land a prestigious scholarship to college. As Liz dives deeper into her investigation, the secrets these murdered seniors never wanted out come to light. The deeper Liz digs, the messier the truth becomes – and with a killer still on campus, she can’t afford to make any mistakes.

Review:

The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman is a solid, dark academic murder mystery told from two points of view, with fast-paced chapters that flow quickly through the investigation and the eventual capture of the killer. Our two points of view are set between a highly academic student on the school paper and the roommate of the murdered girl who has spent her whole life hiding from the media. Liv is the academic journalist who struggles with how she is going to report on the murder of classmates and not make it a gossipy story that is better left to some gossip magazine. Amy, the roommate, doesn’t trust Liv but is forced to move in with her. How much can she trust her? I especially enjoyed that the characters are very realistic, the school has tunnels that are navigated frequently throughout the story, and the students even have a secret messaging app that is unknown to the faculty. The Meadowbrook Murders does a great job of keeping you guessing right up to the last part of the book on who the killer is and even adds in the almost murder of those uncovering the truth. I thoroughly enjoyed this murder mystery.

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