Book Review: "Served Him Right" by Lisa Unger

I do love it when a thriller or mystery keeps me guessing until the end! I’ve been seeing this one all over the place and I finally had to see what the buzz was about.

Ana is through with her ex, Paul. So through, in fact, that she and her friends are going to gather for an “ex-orcism,” where they all delete him off all of their social media and every other form of communication. In the middle of their girls’ brunch, the police show up. It seems that Paul has been found dead.

It’s not long before the police find out that Ana definitely had motive to murder Paul. But she swears she is innocent, and it appears that Paul had a long list of people who might’ve wished him harm. Yet when Ana’s best friend Iggy, who was also at the brunch, becomes seriously ill as a result of poison, everyone—including Ana’s older sister Vera—starts to suspect Ana.

It turns out, however, that lots of people are hiding secrets. As the police start closing in on Ana, she and Vera are both working on trying to clear her name. But their investigations put them both at risk, and stirs up tensions with a secret group of people with their own axes to grind.

There are a lot of characters who narrate the book, and the story shifts between Vera and Ana’s childhood and the present. I liked learning about natural methods of healing and enjoyed the book’s message about how much harder women have to work and how “perfect” they must be in order to succeed.

Book Review: "The Champions" by Kara Thomas

Hadley is new to Sunnybrook, as her mother took a job as the superintendent of schools there. She is biding her time, hoping her senior year will result in her being named editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and getting accepted to Columbia so she can study journalism.

She’s not particularly thrilled that her first assignment is to write an article about the Tigers, Sunnybrook’s football team. They’ve won two consecutive state championships and are hoping to make history by winning a third. Everything in school—and in the town—revolves around the Tigers.

She receives an anonymous email warning her to stay away from the football team, and another telling her not to go to a party being thrown by one of the star players. But Hadley goes to the party, and one of the players that she interviewed collapses and falls into a coma. The players wouldn't let Hadley call an ambulance, and everyone was acting strangely. It turns out he was poisoned.

Eleven years ago, five of Sunnybrook’s cheerleaders were murdered. When another football player winds up dead after causing trouble at a game, Hadley is determined to figure out what’s behind the tragedies. Her investigative methods make her an outcast, but she’s able to track down some people who remember what happened 11 years ago.

What secrets are being hidden? Who is responsible for what is happening? Could Hadley be a target? And most importantly, can the truth be uncovered before someone else dies?

This was a great story, full of drama and twists and turns. It’s a follow-up to Kara Thomas’ book The Cheerleaders, but this can be read as a standalone. Reading this made me glad I didn’t go to high school when social media existed!