4.5 Teen Detectives for Karen M McManus's Nothing More to Tell!

Karen M McManus is an absolute boss when it comes to teen thrillers and her newest book, Nothing More to Tell provides everything I've come to expect when I get my hands on one of her books. There was suspense, there was intrigue, there was a town full of secrets, there were twists upon twists upon twists, and there was just a little bit of love in the mix.

Brynn is a tenacious student journalist who, after another students' prank has left her disgraced, moves back to her home town and finds the perfect opportunity to prove herself as a journalist once more by interning at a true-crime show and researching the unsolved murder of her favorite teacher from four years before. When Brynn was in the eighth grade, three of her peers, including her ex-best friend Tripp Talbot, found their English teacher, Mr. Larkin, bludgeoned to death in the woods. The theory that the police landed on was that a drifter had bludgeoned the beloved teacher in the woods, but now that she's older, Brynn doubts that logic and wants to find out what really happened. This puts her back in Tripp Talbot's orbit and Tripp has serious secrets he wants to keep from his former BFF.

I love a good teen sleuth and Brynn's an excellent one: clever, determined, and willing to put aside her personal fears or embarrassments in order to find the truth. Tripp is less inclined to ask questions and he has a lot of secrets he's trying to keep, but he has genuine affection for Brynn and he wants to help her out, even when that means the risk of having his secrets found out. This relationship really carried the story and caused both characters to shift in their values and goals. While Tripp learned to put his trust in someone, Brynn started questioning whether "revealing (all of) the truth" was really the ultimate "good."

Nothing More to Tell was littered with red herrings and plot twists, dangerous situations and so many mini mysteries. I honestly only knocked .5 off of this rating because there was a pretty significant moment where a character's behavior felt out-of-character in a way that was never really explained. It's a pretty big spoiler, though, so I'll leave it out of my review ;)

I really loved the relationships in this book--not just between Brynn and Tripp but between Tripp and his boss, Brynn and her sister, and with Brynn's other friendships. I also really liked that, throughout the book, there were nods to some of McManus's other works like Two Can Keep a Secret and You'll Be the Death of Me.