-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Mary E. Roach
Knives Out meets A Good Girl's Guide To Murder in Mary E. Roach's debut YA mystery Better Left Buried, in which two girls try to get to the bottom of a town full of secrets, a family full of mystery and an abandoned amusement park where people keep turning up dead.
Lucy Preston just wants to go on vacation. But being the daughter of a famous private detective means that sometimes, your beach vacay goes off the rails a bit. Think: a clandestine meeting at an abandoned amusement park—except instead of a meeting, Lucy and her mom find a body. Because of course they do.
As Lucy's mom is swept into top-secret detective stuff, Lucy sets out to investigate her mom's mysterious connection with this town. Lucy's snooping sets her on a collision course with Audrey Nelson, the mysterious girl on the motorcycle who was there the night they found the body. Lucy has questions, and Audrey has answers, but there's this tiny problem: Lucy's mom is investigating Audrey's mom...for murder.
Everyone has something to hide, and if Lucy and Audrey can't work together to uncover secrets that go back generations, there will likely be another body found at the base of the old roller coaster. And this time it might just be Lucy's.
Alternating between Lucy and Audrey's point of view, and filled with suspense as secrets are spilled, Better Left Buried is sure to leave readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page.
"Roach explores class differences and unbalanced power dynamics in this expertly paced debut thriller...Roach's profound prose teems with strong depictions of character relationships—including an opposites-attract sapphic romance and multiple mother-daughter bonds—set against the moody backdrop of an abandoned amusement park." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An intriguing and quick-moving thrill ride of a whodunit with a fledging amateur detective driving the tension." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about Better Left Buried was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mary E. Roach is an author of thrillers and mysteries and a fan of all things spooky. (But ask about true crime podcasts at your own risk. There are hot takes).
When Mary is not writing stories for and about powerful girls, she can be found teaching martial arts, baking an unreasonable number of cookies, or taking off on thru-hikes through the wilderness of northern Minnesota.
If you liked Better Left Buried, try these:
by Emily Critchley
Published 2023
A mystery she can't remember. A friend she can't forget.
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Published 2018
For fans of The Secret History and The Poison Tree, a novel about a woman whose family and identity are threatened by the secrets of her past, from the New York Times bestselling author of She's Not There.
by S.D. Sykes
Published 2016
In this chilling historical mystery, young girls go missing from a medieval English village and Lord Oswald de Lacy must find the killer before tragedy strikes again.
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
