Someone Knows by Lisa Scottoline – a Review

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Description:
Twenty years ago, in an upscale suburb of Philadelphia, four teenagers spent a summer as closest friends: drinking, sharing secrets, testing boundaries. When a new boy looked to join them, they decided to pull a prank on him, convincing him to play Russian roulette as an initiation into their group. They secretly planned to leave the gun unloaded—but what happened next would change each of them forever.

Now three of the four reunite for the first time since that horrible summer. The guilt—and the lingering question about who loaded the gun—drove them apart. But after one of the group apparently commits suicide with a gun, their old secrets come roaring back. One of them is going to figure out if the new suicide is what it seems, and if it connects to the events of that long-ago summer. Someone knows exactly what happened—but who? And how far will they go to keep their secrets buried?

Review:

Someone Knows by Lisa Scottoline is a standalone mystery thriller.  I have read a number of books by Scottoline, and looked forward to reading this book. However, in Someone Knows I struggled reading the story, which I will explain further in the review.

The story revolves around 4 teenagers (15  years old), who truly are very different that you would not look at them as friends.  Allie, the main character in this story, lacks confidence and doesn’t have many friends, but she gets invited to hang around with a couple of the popular kids.  Sasha, is a spoiled girl, who wants everything her way.  Julian is comes from a rich family, and has a huge crush on Sasha.  David is Julian’s friend, but he worries secretly that he is gay.  None of these kids are really likeable (Allie a little), and they come from dysfunctional families.  

While hanging around with the group, Julian finds a gun buried, and he and Sasha want to take turns playing with the gun.  Allie is against this, but does nothing about it.  In a short time, a new teenager attends the school and Sasha befriends him and invites him to hang with them.  What follows is Julian is jealous of Kyle (new boy) and suggests he has to do a Russian roulette as an initiation. Somehow a bullet was still in the gun, and the worst scenario happens, with Kyle getting killed.  All 4 run, and eventually separate, unable to face what happened.

The story then picks up 20 years later, when one of them commits suicide and Allie returns home unable to cope anymore about what happened in the past.  She wants to tell the truth.  This will put her life in danger.

Yes this was an interesting and intriguing concept of a story, but I had issues.  Especially in the first half of the book, which takes place in the past, there were way too many POV’s, which included the 5 teenagers, parents, etc; an overkill that had me starting to skip.

A key factor was that most of the characters in this book were  unlikeable;  which makes it harder to enjoy the story.  This also was not just about a horrible tragedy when they were young, but there was suicide, pedophilia, murder and dysfunctional families.  These things caused the book to be difficult to follow, especially with the numerous points of views; too many characters and issues that made it difficult to want to continue to read.  I do enjoy Lisa Scottline, but for me this book was not up to her normal great mysteries.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher