Title: I Killed Zoe Spanos
Author: Kit Frick
Release Date: June 30, 2020
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Thriller, Mystery
Rating: ★★★★★
Thank you to Kit Frick for an eARC of this novel and to McElderry Books for an advance finished copy in exchange for an honest review!
Synopsis
What happened to Zoe won’t stay buried…
When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl who has been missing since New Year’s Eve. Anna bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, and her mere presence in town stirs up still-raw feelings about the unsolved case. As Anna delves deeper into the mystery, stepping further and further into Zoe’s life, she becomes increasingly convinced that she and Zoe are connected—and that she knows what happened to her.
Two months later, Zoe’s body is found in a nearby lake, and Anna is charged with manslaughter. But Anna’s confession is riddled with holes, and Martina Green, teen host of the Missing Zoe podcast, isn’t satisfied. Did Anna really kill Zoe? And if not, can Martina’s podcast uncover the truth?
Review
I Killed Zoe Spanos was attention gripping from start to finish. I started it one evening and stayed up past midnight just to finish it because I couldn’t go to sleep without knowing how it all ended. There were so many twists and turns, clues hidden in plain sight everywhere, but even so it was still hard to piece together just what the hell happened to Zoe and what was going on with Anna.
Anna – After partying her way through senior year with drinking and drugs, she’s ready to be serious and put some distance between who she was and who she wants to be in college. To earn some extra cash and get out of the city she takes an au pair job for the summer in the Hamptons for the (blank family). There’s no better way to jump on the responsibility train than to have to be responsible for a kid right? She also apparently looks a lot like a local girl, Zoe, that disappeared on New Years. It seems she has unwittingly stepped into Zoe’s life. Was it an accident though?
Martina – A crime podcaster behind the the “Missing Zoe” podcast. She’s best friends with Zoe’s younger sister Aster and has channeled her journalism passion into helping to solve Zoe’s murder since the cops seem to think she just ran away. Until they don’t. Even then though pieces of the confession aren’t matching up and all she wants to do is find out what exactly happened to Zoe on New Years Eve.
We do have a dual POV, with Anna’s typically being in the past while Martina was the present. It was such a good juxtaposition because we know how things are in the present but not how they got to that point. I also really enjoyed the podcast aspect of the story. We got to learn about Zoe from friends, teachers and classmates which put together this pretty clear image of who she was and why she wouldn’t have just up and disappeared.
I loved Anna and I just kind of felt sorry for her. She’s made some bad decisions but just wanted to turn it all around and be someone better, to make this better life than she had up until this point. Life just dealt her the most craptastic hand though.
There were so many clues and puzzle pieces sprinkled throughout the novel. Things that just stuck out like “oh that was weird I should remember that for later” and made me think I could solve who killed Zoe. I was constantly trying to put the pieces together and it was so fantastic. I love a good twist too and it fit with everything I already knew so it was totally believable. This was my first mystery thriller by Frick and it won’t be my last. If you love unsolved murders and mental puzzles that you can in fact figure out I highly recommend this book.
Leave a Reply