A suspenseful book with insights on forensic science for YA. Ends with a few questions that are not answered, hopefully continuing with another book?! ( )

This was terrible. I don't know if it's that I had such high hopes for this and it missed the mark or if it was just that bad. What I do know is that the main character, Erin Blake is a freaking idiot and the entirety of her investigation violates logic, laws and the evidence she loves so much.

There were so many stupid parts I don't even know where to begin. So this will probably be a mess but I was so annoyed reading this book that I'm just in rant mode.

So Erin and her two friends run their own business, Cheater Checks. Why would anyone pay them to analyse random samples of hair and lipstick. I mean I think lipstick on someone's shirt is pretty clear evidence that they're cheating on you if it's not yours. They never really explained how the other two contribute - apparently one is a hacker and the other one is a profiler? A profiler? Really?

Then; I took an empty box from the trash pile and dumped the contents of my mother’s box into it. My stomach lurched when a huge knife in a plastic bag tumbled from one box to the other. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it closely, but I knew the blade was coated with dark, dried blood. I placed my mother’s empty evidence box back on the shelf. No one was actively working her case, so it wasn’t likely that anyone would look inside. But if the box went completely missing, that might get noticed.

Her mother is murdered. She is interested in the case. Fair enough. She gets to work as an intern at the police station getting rid of old files or something (which sounded ridiculous anyway). While there she conveniently happens to have access to the box of evidence collected from her mother's murder. So what does she do? Takes it all out of the box, puts it in another box and takes it home? WTF? For all each chapter quotes the FBI uncle who apparently wrote the handbook on forensic science - she has no concept of CHAIN OF EVIDENCE. You can't prosecute someone on evidence that has been tampered with. It's not freaking rocket science. Sure, cops take evidence home (although I doubt any of them take home murder weapons). The difference is the chain of evidence is still recognised because they check it out. It literally says;

Chain of custody is critical to insure that the evidence of a crime is true and hasn’t been tampered with. —VICTOR FLEMMING

And yet she takes the freaking evidence home with her. And randomly takes shit out to check things. Like the shirt - as soon as you break the seal that shit has been contaminated because she is not part of a crime lab for fks sake.

And then with the murder of Miss Peters. “That’s a huge red flag to me. I do not want a couple of teenagers thinking they know more about this than I do.” Sydney gestures between Journey and me. “I especially do not want you two comparing notes or having anything to do with this investigation.” “But—” I say. Sydney slices an angry finger through the air. “Hear this: As of this moment, you two are the closest things I have to suspects.” She begins to pace. “The only reason you’re not locked up, Erin, is because I know you.” Sydney gets right up in my face. Then she leans toward Journey. “As for you, I don’t have enough evidence to hold you … yet! But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking.” She steps back and appraises us with hands on her hips. “This behavior is way out of line. Trust me. If you two had anything to do with that murder, I will find out.”

??? What kind of policing is that? Erin literally calls her Aunt Sydney. But her Aunt thinks her capable of murder. Honestly this book just baffled me at points.

There were so many stupid theories given.

An investigator’s first step, before collecting any evidence, is to develop a theory regarding the type of offense that occurred. —VICTOR FLEMMING

Since when? Since when does anyone come up with a conclusion before collecting the evidence? WTF?

Her friendships are all one sided.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, working my way through an e-mail from Lysa. Manifesto would be a better word for it. She says I need to patch things up with Spam. That I must call—not text—her. She’s included a list of talking points, all the things she thinks I need to say. She’s even outlined how I should say these things and what tone I should use. Wow. She must think I’m a complete idiot.

Well I think she's a complete idiot so it's only right that her friends think it too. Erin's a pretty shit friend. She's selfish. It's all about her.

“Evidence is my thing: fingerprints, hair, ink, lipstick. Anything forensic. We’re like the Three Musketeers.” “Yeah. We’re exactly like them,” Spam says, tossing her hair and sounding chipper. “Except, oh right, when you decide to go off on your own.”

She goes on about being a team and then turns her back whenever it suits her. As Spam says at one point, she teams up with Journey first, then ditches him for Victor - and only comes crawling back when she needs something. I wouldn't want to be friends with her. And on a side note - Spam? I felt like that deserved an explanation of how she got the nickname.

Erin's entire home life didn't really make sense. Her guardian's grief at the death of Erin's mother was fine. I didn't believe that she would never tell her anything or ever mention that all of her mum's things were in the attic. Plus she's a 911 operator who is against ever mentioning crime? Really?

Apart from that apparently Rachel's parents are the only grandparents she's ever known. So her relationship with Victor makes no sense. He's the brother of her guardian Rachel. He's the son of those "only grandparents she's ever known". Her entire life she's never once spoken to him? Fair enough not seeing him, although that stretched the boundaries of belief but they never spoke on the phone? Really? They never had Christmas? Thanksgiving? Birthdays? I mean come on.

The love interest; Spam crosses her arms over her chest. “So who killed her then?” I shrug, palms up. “No clue.” “My dad always says the most obvious choice is probably the right one. Which means it must have been Journey,” Lysa says. “I’d go with that,” Spam says. I can’t agree or disagree. I’m just not sure. “I-I don’t know.” “It’s okay that you like him,” Spam says. “Serial killers are really popular. They get prison married and everything.”

I can't even.

The danger was ridiculous.
“What’s up, Mr. Roberts?” I purposely try to sound light and bright. “I know you followed us, dear.” “What are you talking about?” Playing dumb wasn’t my plan but it’s all I’ve got. “Cut the crap. I left the gate open. Bring the car and join us at the cannery loading dock. You have five minutes before I start piling up the bodies.” Bodies, plural? Now I know he has Victor, too.

“Erin and Samantha. The two of you showing up together makes my job much easier.” He points the gun at us. “Keep your hands where I can see them and hand over those cell phones.”

So you think the guy that has killed two people is holding both your boyfriend and your uncle - the trained FBI guy, hostage so you add two more people and walk in without a plan. Apart from the fact she could've gone in by herself and got Spam to call the cops. It was all just so dumb it made me want to scream. I get it, mysteries often have unbelievable moments - but on top of everything else I just wanted to kill them all myself.

“The problem is the police don’t know what we know,” I say. “Then maybe you should tell them,” Spam says.

I get that to have a mystery often the police are avoided/evaded/ignored. But it gets to the point where it's beyond belief.

As far as the motive it made no sense. Was Principal Roberts involved with her mum? They slept together? Why did he think Erin was his? In terms of Miss Peters it was kind of weak - it's not like she was running his DNA through the criminal database but fine I could accept that one.

And speaking of DNA if she's Victor's kid - why the hell did they need to send the paternity test away? Shouldn't he be able to test it himself? He has all the crap he needs on the bench when he tested the first lot of DNA. He already has Erin's - can't he just run his and check if they match?

The characters were all lacking depth. The main character was stupid. The plot was ridiculous. And I struggled to finish this. It was the longest fkn book of my life. The more I think about it, the angrier I get with how stupid it all is. I'm even angrier because I bought this and the sequel thinking it would be fantastic. And now I have to read the freaking sequel. Fml.

1 star. ( )

Formulaic. ( )

2.5 stars. Just not for me unfortunately.
I think this is a time where this book felt a bit young for me. That's probably more my fault than the books fault but there were still issues I had that had nothing to do with that. I did not understand the dynamic of the friend group at all. They always seemed mad at each other and they were quite mean to each other. Obviously, friends sometimes tease each other but we never really got to see them as really close friends so it seemed like they were just always mean to each other. They also each have a special skill: Erin can do forensics, Spam (yes, that's what they call her) is a hacker, and Lysa has profiling skills. I really never like this sort of thing. It makes it seem like each character is from a video game with only very specific skills. We also never really get to see Lysa do any profiling. It seems like she just spies on her lawyer dad.
The romance between Erin and Journey is also really underdeveloped. I didn't understand what made her like him except that he was popular and played basketball. It seemed like they didn't talk at all before this book. He lacked any real personality and their relationship was not interesting. They also both lie to everyone from the very beginning even though most of the things they were doing weren't illegal or bad and the lying got them in a lot of trouble.
The mystery was also very obvious to me. I knew who the murderer was around page 60. They tried to make me think it was a few other people but for the most part it was obvious who it was the whole time. Sometimes it felt like characters were almost breaking the fourth wall to point out to me how weird something about them was.
I think this is probably not a bad book. I have simply aged out of the target audience and at in this case it did impact my enjoyment. ( )

Erin's mother was killed when she was just a baby. If that wasn't enough trauma, 14 years later, she finds her high school biology teacher dead on her front porch. Miss Peters had been helping Erin search for her missing father using the DNA of men she suspected. Could there be a connection between what she was doing for Erin and her murder? Is Miss Peter's death connected to the death of her mother? These are questions that Erin must answer before she can find any peace. With the help of her friends, Spam and Lysa along with her new boyfriend, Journey, Erin begins to search for forensic evidence that will point her toward Miss Peter's killer.

I enjoyed this story. It worked well on many levels and would be appropriate for middle grade readers as well as high school.

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