Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • The CBR Team
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us

Open Registration for CBR13 ends Jan. 31! Sign Up Today!

> FAQ Home
> Genre: Fiction > Come for the gorgeous book. Stay for the page-turning mystery.

Come for the gorgeous book. Stay for the page-turning mystery.

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick

August 3, 2020 by scootsa1000 Leave a Comment

Reader, this book is, without a doubt, the single most beautiful hardcover I have ever seen. Just look at those blue pages! Absolutely stunning. I admittedly bought this book simply because it was so pretty…and then, Cannonball friend Karen McManus tweeted about what a great mystery it was, and into the vacation reading pile it went!

This story starts near the end: a young woman named Anna turns herself in to police in a small Hamptons summer town, confessing to the murder of a missing local woman, Zoe Spanos, 8 months earlier. From the transcript of her confession, there are clearly a lot of holes in her story, so we aren’t quite sure whether or not Anna actually has anything to do with Zoe’s death or not.

As the story continues, it jumps from summer to fall to the previous winter. We get to know Anna, who is working as a nanny for a local family for the summer, away from home in Brooklyn for the first time. Anna is attempting to recreate herself after a bad year of drinking, drugs, random hook ups, and visits from the police. And Anna has a chilling resemblance to Zoe Spanos, who disappeared on New Year’s Eve and hasn’t been heard from or seen since. The locals constantly remind her how much she looks like Zoe, and her host family admits that it was her resemblance to Zoe that got her the job, as their young daughter loved Zoe.

Anna gets to know a few people in town: Zoe’s sister, Aster; Martina, Aster’s best friend, who has a successful podcast about Zoe’s disappearance; and Caden, Zoe’s longtime boyfriend. As Anna starts listening to the podcast, she learns all about Zoe and her new friends, and wonders if any of them could be responsible for her disappearance.

Anna also starts to have strange visions — sort of like deja vu — whenever she thinks about Zoe, and some of the visions are so vivid she starts to wonder if she has ever actually been in this town before, or if she had previously met Zoe.

The mystery constantly had me second guessing myself. I kept thinking I knew what happened and who did it, and then Kit Frick would pull the rug out from underneath me with something so surprising, but that made so much sense. Did I 100% buy the ending? No. But I didn’t care. I was so invested in the story, and was impressed that all of the loose ends got tied up by the last page.

Other things I loved about this book (besides the blue pages):
Several references to Rebecca and Manderley. What better way to set the scene than by paying homage to one of the creepiest mysteries ever?

Anna is most definitely an unreliable, and often not very likable narrator, and I was still hoping she would be ok at the end.

There is a map of the town. I love a good map.

IMG_2443

All in all, a great summer mystery. I’ll be looking for Kit Frick’s earlier books, for sure.

cbr12 bingo: UnCannon

 

 

 

Filed Under: Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult Tagged With: cbr12, cbr12bingo, I Killed Zoe Spanos, karen mcmanus, kit frick, Scootsa1000, UnCannon

scootsa1000's CBR12 Review No:19 · Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult · Tags: cbr12, cbr12bingo, I Killed Zoe Spanos, karen mcmanus, kit frick, Scootsa1000, UnCannon ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

About scootsa1000

CBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6CBR 5CBR 4CBR 3

I've been kicking around since CBR3. View scootsa1000's reviews»

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • sabian30 on Commencing the Great Cosmere Re-read.I'm reading this now after watching his class at BYU. I'd never read any of his stuff, but he seems an interesting fellow (gamer nerd...
  • andtheIToldYouSos on …but the past ain’t through with you.I can't wait for you to read The Searcher!
  • TylerDFC on …but the past ain’t through with you.I keep waiting for her spell to break, but I have yet to give one of her books less than five stars. "The Likeness" flat...
  • TylerDFC on …but the past ain’t through with you.Thanks! It's good to be back.
  • andtheIToldYouSos on Teenage girls are so powerfullovely review! I want to read this SO BADLY!
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in