DEAD BLUE

Nearly Boswell’s name is an adverb with glass-half-empty connotations. Appropriate, given she’s almost certain to win the scholarship that’s her route out of Sunny View trailer park, almost pretty under her second-hand clothes, and she almost likes her best friend as much as he likes her.

But Nearly has a deep, dark secret. She’s hopelessly addicted to the personal classified ads, which give her a hotline into the emotions of the writers. It’s an addictive rush – until a girl turns up drugged and naked under the bleachers, and a cryptic series of ads reveal clues to increasingly terrible crimes. Girls start turning up dead, and all the evidence points back to the one person capable of solving the clues – Nearly herself.

Reformed bad boy Reece Whelan is a narc. Working for the cops as a confidential informant is the only thing keeping him out of juvie. Helping police solve the chain of crimes could be his ticket to redemption, but shadowing Nearly is a challenge. The more Reece gets to know her, the harder it is to keep his distance, and as the evidence mounts against Nearly, Reece is sure not only that she’s being set up – but that he’s falling for the girl the cops think is the perp.

Drawn into a forbidden partnership, Reece fights to protect Nearly from the cops who suspect her and a calculating predator who has her second-guessing the people she loves. Somehow Nearly must work out the meaning of the mysterious numbers blue-inked on the victims and their connection to the puzzling ads But time is running out, and who can Nearly trust with her secrets, her heart, and her life?

Category: Young Adult