Hello everyone, happy Monday! I hope the week has started out well! Today I’m going to be reviewing Sara Shepard’s first novel in her Amateurs trilogy, The Amateurs.

The Amateurs by: Sara Shepard: Five years ago, Aerin’s sister Helena went missing and was murdered but no one was able to solve the mystery. Aerin, desperate to solve the case, puts a call out on a website called Case Not Closed, a site run by amateur detectives, most of them just teens themselves. A few of them, Seneca and Maddy, are intrigued and go out to see if they can help unravel the truth. This novel was addicting in a teen drama, whodunit storta way. The story was fast-paced and kept the reader intrigued enough to continue. There were a lot of really cheesy, predictable and clichéd moments throughout the novel, which the reader was okay with, but when it came to the ending, the reader was hit out of left field. The way this ended was very unexpected and it didn’t feel cheesy or predicable. It gave the reader just enough to hook them for the next novel. Shepard has a clever way with writing a very compelling mystery; even though the reader didn’t expect too much from this story, they got more than they thought they would. Her red herrings were set up well, even if some of them felt added forcefully and left them unbelievable, she had some stellar ones too. She also had a captivating way of writing characters; she puts thought and detail into each one to give them a really flushed background. The way each character had something in common with one another was a good way to not only have her characters bond, but to create a series arc. The reader is truly curious what is going to happen in the second novel.