The Girl in the Park -- Mariah Fredericks
Rain Donovan and Wendy Geller used to be best friends, but they haven't been close for years. There's still mutual respect and affection, though: they didn't have a huge falling-out or anything, they just grew apart.
When Wendy is murdered—an apparently random sexual assault and mugging in Central Park after an especially big night of partying—a seemingly endless game of blame-the-victim starts. Rain is angry at everyone: the press, for being revoltingly exploitative; her peers, for both buying into the gossip-mongering and for refusing to acknowledge the very real possibility that the murder may not have been random, that the perpetrator may have been One Of Their Own. No one seems interested in speaking for Wendy, and so Rain—a girl who has always been hesitant to open her mouth—has to find her voice.
First up, a big THANK YOU to Mariah Fredericks for writing a Bad Boy character who [SPOILER] does NOT have a Heart of Gold, and who does NOT get romantically involved with the protagonist. THANK YOU. SERIOUSLY. The scene in the stairwell? Is horrifying. And very, very well done.
When I had the realization about the Bad Boy, I had a Mystery Solution Epiphany and immediately made the leap to the killer's identity, but I've read A LOT of mystery novels. Just because the red herrings didn't trip me up doesn't mean that they won't keep younger readers guessing. My only minor complaint was that the storyline partially hinges on one character keeping quiet—which was out of character—about A Certain Plot Point until the very end, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
That aside, though, it's a solid little mystery. It's set among the Gossip Girl set, with drinking and smoking and sex and minimal parenting and so on, which can often feel—to those of us who haven't/don't live/d it—like fantasy but it's also grounded in reality, in that Rain's emotions and voice ring true. Recommended to fans of Lauren Henderson's Scarlet Wakefield series—which is also about an outsider-girl trying to solve a mystery among the young-and-privileged set—though this one has a darker, more serious feel.
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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.