Ooh this one was cool. A teenage girl starts a true crime podcast, which is super of the moment. There are more true crime podcasts than one human can keep up with these days. Hers is part of her high school senior year project though, which makes it a little more interesting in the grand scheme of things. She starts out the book walking through a cemetery (I can’t remember why?) and comes across a grave. Ooh and she’s in a new town because something mysterious happened with her mom (death?) and she has to live with her dad and stepmom now. Anyway, she sees this grave of a girl who died as a teen. It’s one of those graves where people put flowers and stuffed animals and trinkets and stuff. Piper thinks she has an interesting name (Layla Trello), and I agree.
Piper starts digging into whatever details she can find at the library or at school, or by interviewing the people involved in the case. She makes a kind of frenemy with the boy she “met” at the cemetery (by wrangling his escaped therapy dog) who helps her with her podcasts. She becomes kinda famous throughout the town because her podcasts are actually well produced and interesting, and most people can tell that she truly cares about finding Layla’s killer.
Of course someone in her town doesn’t want the truth to come out, so she’s in danger for a good portion of the book. I only figured out who the bad guy was about ten minutes before Piper did, so I thought it was really well written.
