Kill Creatures

Gr 9 Up–A girl returns after a year missing, and no one is more surprised than her best friend—because she’s the one who killed her. While that feels like a big reveal early on, this is a delightfully thrilling look at the lead-up and aftermath of the fateful summer night when best friends Nan, Luce, Edie, and Jane entered Saltcedar Canyon for a swim and only Nan returned. Now, a year later, Luce is plucked out of the lake during a vigil for the missing friends. But why did Nan, whose first-person perspective propels the novel in Now (this summer) and Then (last summer) chapters, do it? And will Luce, suffering from amnesia, remember what happened? Readers who enjoy an unreliable, uncertain, and at times unhinged narrator will love Nan’s voice and her simmering rage (“if I ever kill her again, it’ll be with my bare hands”) as everything she thought was over rises to the surface, along with some secrets even she couldn’t fathom. The author explores friendship, fitting in, crushes, revenge, and the lies we tell ourselves in this tight, fast-moving narrative. Skin tone is not described, but Nan has blond hair and blue eyes, Luce has blue eyes and curly red hair, Edie has dark hair and “quicksilver” eyes, and Jane has dark hair. There is LGBTQIA+ representation in the main cast. Hand to fans of Rebecca Stafford’s Rabbit & Juliet and Megan Lally’s No Place to Hide.