Kisses and Lies, by Lauren Henderson

Kiss Me Kill Me, the first book in Lauren Henderson’s series featuring 16-year-old Scarlett Wakefield, was an unexpected delight: a YA mystery that blended the guilty pleasures of the Gossip Girl series with the girl-power attitude of a Nancy Drew book. Kiss Me Kill Me had its faults (too many plot threads were left unresolved at the end of the novel), but its storytelling and characterization stood head and shoulders above the majority of the books in the “glamorous teen” genre.

Happily for her readers, Henderson’s sequel, the just-released Kisses and Lies, is even better, emphasizing the story’s mystery elements instead of its rich-kids-misbehaving ones. Over the course of the novel, Scarlett travels from London nightclubs to a Scottish castle, desperate to learn more about the death of Dan McAndrew, the boy who died in her arms of a freak allergy attack moments after giving Scarlett her first kiss. While Kiss Me Kill Me implicated certain characters in Dan’s death, Kisses and Lies introduces several new suspects—and raises some tantalizing questions about the boy himself.

By the end of Kisses and Lies, the story’s central mystery has been settled, but plenty of intriguing minor points are left unresolved. This has us wondering which direction the third book is going to take—will it feature more of the girl-sleuth action of Kisses and Lies, or the Mean Girls-style viciousness that made up the majority of Kiss Me Kill Me? We’re hoping for the former, because Henderson has made it clear with Kisses and Lies that she’s capable of producing something more original than another series about bored, wealthy teens behaving badly.