Rating: 4 out of 5.

This is a fast-paced YA thriller that kept my attention from page 1. Greta is our unreliable narrator looking for a fresh start after an unfortunate “incident” at her prior school makes her an outcast. The author drips hints about the “incident” throughout most of the book and we don’t get the full picture until close to the end. It definitely makes the reader speculate what could have happened and I confess, I thought of worse things the “incident” could have been other than what it ended up being. I mean, the precipitating thing is awful, don’t get me wrong, but her response wasn’t so bad….was it? Eh. Maybe I’m just getting a big jaded and vengeful in my “old” age and believing more in karma for a**holes. But I digress.

The book is part thriller, part redemption story, and part found family. Great gets a job at an amusement park, hoping to reinvent herself among people that don’t know her past. She’s ashamed of her actions, full of doubts, and vulnerable. She doesn’t feel she can trust her judgement. When she has a brief encounter with Mercy, a promising performer at the park, she gets pulled into a decades old mystery she’s determined to solve. Especially when Mercy goes missing the next day and it seems Greta is the only person concerned about her. This forces Greta to interact with her co-workers. Her interactions with them is what you’d expect from someone that had been traumatized. She’s nervous, awkward, constantly second-guesses herself, and talks down to herself. At times it’s painful to read how hard she is on herself. But she’s also tough, persistent, and not easily dissuaded. She just doesn’t give herself enough credit for those characteristics.

Co-worker Ivy is tough as nails, tells it like it is, and protectively takes Greta under her wings to show her the ropes. Co-worker Liam is a steady friend she comes to rely on and trust, even though she thinks he’ll run the other way once he finds out about her past. She’s definitely gun-shy about how others will treat her once they know, especially based on her old friend’s reactions to the “incident”. The author does a great job of making everyone in the story suspicious at one point or another, giving arm-chair sleuths plenty of fodder to work with.

The book clips along at a good pace and is an easy read. There are some twists a reader will see coming, and others they won’t. The book has a satisfactory ending that caps off an entertaining read.

I was provided a gifted copy of the book from @topplingstackstours. All opinions are my own.

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SYNOPSIS

A teen girl’s attempt at social reinvention takes a deadly turn when a co-worker disappears—and she learns she may have been the last person to see the missing girl—in this razor-sharp, murderously funny thriller debut.

After the incident last year, Greta Riley Green is looking for reinvention—a fresh start—and a job at Hyper Kid Magic Land, the local amusement park, seems like the perfect way to forge a new path . . . no matter what it takes.

So when fate pulls Greta into Mercy Goodwin’s orbit, it feels like things are looking up. Beautiful and confident, Mercy dazzles audiences daily. And at the first party of the summer, she picks Greta to confide in. Mercy has a secret to share, if Greta will just meet her the next day. It’s a sign that Greta’s truly fitting in.

Only, when the time comes, Mercy is a no-show—as she is everyday after that—and Greta knows something’s wrong. She can’t help thinking back to the night of the party. Did Mercy seem upset? Terrified, even? Could she be in trouble? It wouldn’t be the first time a talented young performer came to a sinister end at Hyper Kid. . . .

Of course, Greta has her own issues with the past, and the more she uncovers Hyper Kid’s secrets, the more her own threaten to surface. This job was meant to be a reboot, a summer without trouble. But trouble, it seems, finds Greta, and her past—and the bloody past of Hyper Kid—is about to catch up with her.