BLURB:
Sixteen
year old math whiz, Autumn, spends her days reading about serial killers and
dreaming of becoming an FBI Profiler. She never dreams her first case will be
so personal. Her world is shattered when she comes home from school and
discovers her murdered sister’s body on the living room floor. When the initial
evidence points to a burglary gone wrong, Autumn challenges the police’s theory
because of the personal nature of the crime. Thinking that finding the killer
will bring her family back together, she conducts her own investigation using
her affinity for math and forensics, but her plan backfires and her obsession
with the case further splinters her family.
When her investigation reveals the killer is someone she knows, Autumn
offers herself up as bait and sets a dangerous trap to unmask his true nature
and to obtain a confession for her sister’s murder.
REVIEW:
Unraveled is about a young girl named Autumn, and her journey through grief as she tries to find out who killed her sister and why.
When we meet Autumn, she is panicking and staring down at the body of her dead sister. Celeste has been stabbed multiple times, and cannot be revived. Autumn comes under fire for a potential role in the murder, but as they eye her, she's using her near genius to try and figure out who the real killer is.
I enjoyed this book. The first chapter was rather exhausting emotionally, as we're thrown straight into the murder, but it was interesting to watch Autumn grow from the experience. Her conflicts with her parents gave her doubts, but she pressed onward. I thought her romantic interest, Caedon, was especially sweet, going to sit with her beneath her favorite tree to read. I'd recommend this read to anybody who enjoys YA.
AUTHOR BIO:
Susan grew up in South Texas, about ten miles from
the U.S.-Mexican border. As a child she spent the summers in Mexico with her
grandparents and extended family. During these vacations, she frequently
created mysteries for her siblings and cousins to solve. These mysteries were
her first stories. Nancy Drew soon became her childhood hero and inspiration to
write mysteries for young adults.
Her greatest joy is her daughter who is quite the
storyteller and likes to come up with the characters’ names for mom’s stories.
When she’s not writing or studying, you can find her
looking after her personal mini-zoo which consists of two fish, one thief of a
dog, and some hermit crabs.
Susan loves estates sales, traveling, spending time
with her family, and discovering new books at the Columbus Metropolitan
library.
Susan graduated from the University of Texas, is
currently pursuing an MFA from Seton Hill University, and dreams of one day
owning a touch screen murder board like the one on her favorite TV show,
Castle.
EXCERPT:
“Autumn, yesterday you had told us that when you
arrived home the front door was open. Is that correct?”
I leaned in toward the voice recorder on the table
and said, “Yes.”
“Are you positive about that? We interviewed some of
the neighbors, and none of them saw an open front door at your house?” No doubt
Mrs. Jimenez had told them that. Now that she was retired, she had nothing
better to do than watch her neighbors. I wondered if she had mentioned seeing
anything to Detective Kasanoff. Maybe she saw something unusual that day, a
stranger in the neighborhood, a suspicious car, anything.
“The door looked closed, but when I touched my key
to the lock, it opened.”
“Do you know who was the last person to leave the
house that day?” I looked over at my parents. Mami had her head buried in her
hands. She shouldn’t be here, hearing about all of this. Papi had his arm
around her and gave me an encouraging smile.
“I was.”
“What time did you leave that morning?”
“About 8:00 a.m.”
“Did you leave through the front door?” I didn’t
like where this was going.
“Yes, and I locked it behind me,” I offered before
he had a chance to ask the question.
“How can you be sure? Look, I know how it is. It’s
easy to get on autopilot in the morning. You do the same thing every morning,
you get into a routine.”
I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I don’t
forget things, Detective. I know I locked the door that morning.” He studied me
for a moment and flipped through his papers.
“That’s right. Here it is. You’re some kind of math
genius. You almost made the US Math Olympiad Team last year.” I wanted to reach
across the table and strangle him. Someone had butchered my sister in my own
living room, and he was reading up on how I’d choked on a freaking geometry
question during last year’s Math Olympiad final round and failed to make the
team?
“I’m gifted, Detective. I’m not smart enough to be a
genius.” He broke into a smile. The first I’d ever seen from him.
“Is there really a difference?”
“Yes, about five IQ points.” He wrote something down.
“Let’s move on. You said you had come home because
you’d left your math questions on the kitchen table that morning. Is that
correct?” “Yes.”
He lifted the folder up and produced some papers
that were protected in a plastic bag. He placed them in front of me. “Are these
the questions you were referring to?”
I looked at my parents, and both of them had their
eyes glued to the plastic bag in front of me.
Without touching the bag, I looked at the front page
and saw the first question. It was the Bernoulli equation question that Celeste
had asked me that morning over breakfast.
“Yes, those are the ones.”
“Care to know where we found them?” What did he
mean? I’d left them on the kitchen table when I went to brush my teeth after
breakfast.
“On the kitchen table?” I asked, trying not to sound
sarcastic.
“No. In your backpack. The backpack we found at the
scene yesterday.” He looked over at my parents this time. My eyes grew wide,
and my mouth fell open.
“Mr. or Mrs. Covarrubias, did either of you put
these math papers back into Autumn’s backpack after breakfast?” Papi left for
the bakery every morning at 5:30 a.m. so he wasn’t even home. Mami had left
right after Celeste and I had eaten because she had a dentist appointment.
Maybe Mami’d seen the papers and stuck them in my backpack. Celeste had left
about ten minutes before me. Her boyfriend Voss had swung by to pick her up. He
did that every day.
“Mami, did you put the papers in my backpack?” Her
eyes were swollen, and I swear she was two seconds away from passing out. Her
gaze wandered around the room until it fell on me. She shook her head. My heart
sank.
“Then it had to be Celeste. She must have put them
in there.”
“Her fingerprints weren’t found on the papers.” How
was that possible? The oils from her hands would have been transferred onto the
paper if she’d stuck them in my backpack. It couldn’t have been her then. That
left no one, and I had no answer. That wasn’t good.
“Autumn, look, I’m going to be honest with you.
There are some things that just don’t add up here. We have witnesses that say
you and your sister were arguing at school that morning and that she looked
very upset. Care to explain what that was all about?”
I could feel the cell doors closing in around me.
This was a witch hunt, and I was about to be burned at the stake.
My parents were staring at me, begging me with their
eyes to explain what was going on. The question mark stabbed my heart. They
knew that Celeste and I hardly ever fought. The last time had to have been when
I’d accidentally given her a black eye when I was five and was trying to learn
to hit a baseball.
I looked at the detective and said the only thing I
knew to say. “Detective Kasanoff, I want a lawyer.”
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