When your high school crush is also your number one suspect, what’s a boy to do?
After the disappearance of Eastview High’s homecoming king, seventeen-year-old Charlie Schiffer must put his detective skills to work to help class heartthrob Dare Chalmers find his missing twin brother. From the gator-filled swamps of Paynes Prairie to the truck-stop strip club Café Risqué, there’s no situation too dicey for this amateur sleuth when he’s on the prowl for clues to this mystery.
Meanwhile, Dare is everything Charlie could want in a boyfriend—charismatic, handsome, polite—but as Charlie’s mother always says, the unlikeliest people can turn out to be criminals. When evidence surfaces revealing his suspects’ hidden motives, Charlie must dig deep to suss out who among them is innocent and who is guilty, even if it means betraying the man he cares for most.
Great start to a series.
Don't worry I'm not going to give anything away as far as the plot goes but I will talk about my experience with this book.
This being my first experience with Lascarso after her books filling up my GR feed I maybe had some lofty expectations, some of which were met. Where I think she sets herself apart is creating an atmosphere from the high school cliques to Boots (AWWWW!!! GET INTO MY POCKET!) to his relationship with his mother. She brought this small Florida town and its inhabitants to life by making the details of life in this community part of the narrative without weighing it down with info dumps.
This is a mystery first and foremost with Charlie Schiffer at the center of it, without him and Lascarso's deft touch in making him likable and relateable, the whole thing would've fallen apart. I connected with Charlie quickly-kind of an outcast after an kerfuffle with some classmates, a bit on the nerdy side, extremely intelligent, has some familial baggage and is the son of a police officer. Naturally inclined to be investigative and inquisitive leads him to the heart of this mystery.
The high school backdrop and all the inherent intricacies of navigating adolescence along with trying to solve this mystery I found fun; it added some levity to the story. Charlie comes across as genuine as do the rest of his classmates and even though he is highly intelligent he still reads as a teen who takes some stupid risks and makes ill-conceived choices.
I'm not sold on Dare just yet, though. There were times when I felt sympathetic towards him but others when I side-eyed the bejesus out of him. So I'm reserving judgment on him until later. Tameka, though, I like her muchly! She was big fun and I hope she'll continue to make appearances as the series progresses.
Dare and Charlie's relationship fits into the narrative well and I actually liked the 'what if' factor, but In the Pines isn't heavy on the romance, if that's what you're after. They do have a sexy rendez-vous but it's by no means explicit.
My only real complaint per se is that the mystery wasn't more convoluted. I was expecting something far more sinister and far-reaching than what it turned out to be which disappointed me, but that's a me thing and I would in no way dissuade others from reading it. I also found the ending sequence a bit over the top.
But Charlie and the general atmosphere created won me over and I'm looking forward to the next one in this series. I would caution anyone who doesn't like procedurals, this is probably not the book for you, but if you enjoy YA and mystery then give In the Pines a go.
An ARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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