Canadian author Elle Kennedy has diverged into the young adult mystery-thriller genre with this new book offering, Thornbird.

Kennedy is the author of the immensely popular Off Campus hockey-romance series, which was adapted into the Amazon Prime TV series of the same name released earlier this year.

This new novel sees 17-year-old Ryan Shipley move back to the town she had left as a child. Until then she had lived with her grandmother in another town under an assumed name after her serial-killer father had killed her mother and was jailed. Now she has yet another name, not to mention an invented history, and finds that everyone not only still hates her family, but that their old home has also become a true-crime curiosity.

What’s more, Ryan’s cousins don’t remember her nor do they know her real identity, but as her father’s impending execution makes its way into the headlines again she finds the secrets of her past are very hard to keep hidden.

Things get even messier when the FBI starts sniffing around, believing the clues to the mystery of where Ryan’s father has hidden the bodies of his victims somehow lies with her.

Reviewer’s thoughts

I enjoyed this teen thriller and so did my picky teen readers.

Despite the genre deviation the book still leans strongly on romantic tropes, including the classic taming of the bad boy and love-triangle arcs, but the story maintains the suspense with lots of teen angst and dark twists.

While some scenes are mildly raunchy there are no graphic spice scenes.

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