Better Left Buried

by Mary E. Roach

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781368098403
Publisher:	Disney Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	111,961
Product dimensions:	5.77(w) x 8.52(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/20/2024

Roach explores class differences and unbalanced power dynamics in this expertly paced debut thriller. Gay 16-year-old Lucille Preston knows almost nothing about her private investigator mother. So, when her mother is called by a mysterious Pierce Anselm, it’s the first time Lucy has ever seen her cool composure crack; the pair’s discovery of Pierce’s corpse at the base of a roller coaster shatters it. While uncovering her mother’s history with the Anselms—a wealthy family of amusement park tycoons—Lucy becomes entangled with teen Audrey Nelson, also gay, who was at the scene of the crime. As Audrey endeavors to clear her name of Pierce’s death and Lucy digs up more of her mother’s past, it soon becomes clear that the danger is far from over. Whether it’s revenge or a cover-up they’re after, the Anselms will stop at nothing to achieve it. 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. Lucy describes her mother’s skin as a “soft brown” while hers is “as pale as my dad’s”; Audrey reads as white. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2024-05-04
A pair of queer teenagers attempt to unravel the mysteries of a small town’s murderous history.

Lucy is begrudgingly spending her spring break in Haeter Lake, Tennessee, population 1,376, because her mom, the renowned private detective Katy Preston, has made an unexpected detour. She’s there to investigate the death of Pierce, the powerful Anselm family patriarch. Audrey Nelson is at the scene of the crime, stealthily hiding, when Lucy and her mom arrive, and the two teens lock eyes; Lucy doesn’t say anything, though she’s intrigued. While Katy tends to the crime solving, Lucy discovers that her mom has a whole history of her own that’s connected to Haeter Lake that Lucy knows nothing about. Her curiosity piqued, she begins her own investigation, but she’s warned by Arthur Joyce, the town’s longtime librarian, to stop digging around. Audrey and Lucy are attracted to each other and immediately become entwined—and as they grow closer, the stakes ratchet up, especially when the town sheriff looks to pin the murder on Audrey’s mother. But beyond the suffocating grip the Anselm family has on the town, the atmosphere seethes with racist overtones. Audrey (who’s white) and Lucy (whose dad is white and mom is cued Black) are determined to find out the truth—and stay alive while doing so. The chapters alternate between the girls’ first-person perspectives.

An intriguing and quick-moving thrill ride of a whodunit with a fledging amateur detective driving the tension. (Thriller. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews