Nothing More to Tell

'Nothing More to Tell' is another instalment into the YA mystery/thriller from Karen McManus and one that starts by putting the main character Brynn into a new town, her old one, and having her life plans thrown out of wack by things outside of her control (such as her father's job moving them back, and someone posting a bunch of d*ck pics on the news site she was working for on her account without her permission). Going into the interview at this new news place she is gunning for, we learn that she has gone a different route than is usually taken. Rather than just sending her CV, and a personal statement, she decides to send what got her fired from her previous job, however unfairly, which usually wouldn't make someone look good but because this new place is looking for more hungry new writers and crime enthusiasts because they are a smaller company they cannot rely on more prominent people or the more experienced but monotonous people who know what they are. They need to find someone before they explode, so they have someone way above what they would usually be able to get, for so little.

You can definitely tell that Carly Diaz is going to either be a crucial figure involving helping Brynn or is going to be extra pressure on her to get a good story quickly which might lead her into more danger. The second one is a lot more common, so I am hoping that she doesn't fall into that and go for it. She knows that she is good at journalism, but she also puts a lot of pressure on herself as her father, mother and sister have something that they specialise in, and she feels like the odd one out. It is definitely very hard to hold yourself in high regard when everyone around you is doing something amazing, especially when it is people you care about because it isn't going to manifest as something like jealousy (most of the time) and will usually manifest as a sort of inferiority complex where the person doesn't see themselves as good enough no matter what they do.

The murder this is going to be centred around is a teacher called Mr Larkin, Brynn's teacher when she was younger. He was murdered, and they classed it as a killing by some drifters and then there was nothing more mentioned about it once a few weeks had passed. As if they were just now trying to brush everything under the rug and rid themselves of the tragedy that happened. There are a lot of details in the story that doesn't make sense, and that were just brushed under the rug without any sort of investigation. Things such as money stolen from Mr Larkin being found in Charlotte's locker, one of the people who found him, or how Shane (another person who found him) had his fingerprints on the murder weapon. There is also another twist in the tale, that being Tripp telling Brynn to leave him alone and stop stalking him when they had been all fine and dandy just the day before. It doesn't look like it means anything at first, but when you factor in that it happened the day before Mr Larkin was murdered and that Tripp was one of the three people who found him it starts to make it a little suspicious.

As with other Karen books she likes to include other POVs, with this one being from the perspective of Tripp. Unlike Charlotte and Shane, Tripp isn't rich and so has to rely on things like scholarships to get where he wants. His mother isn't in his life and his father seems sort of absent from what he needs as a parent, meaning the only parental figure he really has in his life is a woman called Regina. And we get a glimpse into his mind about how he has definitely done some horrible things *wink wink*.

We also get flashbacks to the past, very short and sweet as Karen doesn't want to give too much away too quickly. Having your audience know something that the characters don't is fine, but when the whole book is based on that it really doesn't work. We only get these from the perspective of Tripp as, no offence to her, but Brynn's life is boring in comparison. Going back to the school that Brynn was once in there is now a class divide between some students as they have let more students in that aren't rich, meaning the rich want to create that gap and feel better than poor people. It is establishing another thing that Brynn is going to have to start keeping track of, and something she has to avoid becoming. I think the inclusion of her sister, Ellie, is another trick to make that system inside the school hold more weight. If she lets her social standing go then her sister is going to be looked at in a less than favourable light once she has left.

At the new term assembly, while unveiling a portrait of Mr Larkin there are worse written over his face, 'Asshole' which obviously causes quite the stir and brings to light that there may be more than meets the eye to the beloved teacher. I mean it is the way I always loved to start my school year. Desecrating a dead teacher's portrait. Just a normal Monday morning.

While out on his normal morning run when he is hit by a quick 1-2 as a grey Sedan that seems familiar drives past, and then he gets a text message saying, 'Murderer' which really freaks him out. This shows that whoever it is that is doing this if it is even one person, is just going after Mr Larkin, but also after the 3 people who found him. Either for the actual secret they are hiding, or because they think they know the secret that the three of them are hiding. I'm confusing myself there, so hopefully you're not feeling the same way.

There was definitely a romantic connection between Brynn and Tripp, especially on his end, before she left as while he can't point out anything specific that makes Charlotte beautiful he is easily able to do it with Brynn, which is all I need to know that the feelings that were there once haven't fully disappeared. Or maybe they never disappeared in the first place, which still begs the question as to why he pushed her away that that specific time. (That could also be the thing he feels horrible about, because he had to, for whatever reason, push her away to get something vital to him living a normal life). Meanwhile, the relationship between Shane and Charlotte isn't going as well as it could be. Not on her side, because it seemed like she has liked him for a long time and is content with their relationship (always wanting to be close to him, goes with him almost everywhere) but on Shane's side as I can see that she is a lot to handle and if he doesn't really love her it would be hard to put up with. She is very particular about the things that she likes and is almost like a perfect princess but she hasn't been shown to be that bad in terms of being mean or horrible to people so I feel a bit bad for her, knowing that Shane isn't content and even seems annoyed when she isn't paying attention to her particular way of doing things.

After being rebuffed on her story by an old school executive, Carly comes out in private and supports her efforts, leading her to do some more research and finding out that Shane's family not only donated $100k to the school but also donated $250k to the police department (kind of suspicious timing when their son was one of the people who found a dead body).

After seeing Mr Solomon, who said that Mr Larkin got what he deserved, there is some more weirdness because Brynn wants to go and see Tripp Charlotte says he is having a bad day. And once she does find him and he is just starting to open up about how he doesn't hate her, and his reason for feeling like he had to get her to hate him, Shane comes over and says he is having a bad day (parroting what Charlotte said) and then drags him away as if he is trying to keep Tripp from spilling some kind of secret.

Hm, how curious. (Although this doesn't really seem related to the murder and has more to do with the reason why he wanted her to hate him, the further I get into this book the more I realise that him wanting her to hate him and the murders are two separate incidents altogether. This is more in the vein of him finding out that his father and her mother are having an affair or something of the sort).

One thing that I definitely know is going to cause any kind of relationship that Brynn and Tripp start to build to crumble is the fact that she is reporting on the story that involves him and his two best friends. The end result might not show them in the best light and might bring up old traumas, even if they had nothing to do with the actual murders. I will also say that I can see something happened where she chooses not to release the information (because then it would be pretty hard to forgive her character) but it gets out somehow anyways and like with the d*ck pic story has her name attached to it so they think that she was the one who released the story and then she might go through some life-threatening situation where she is finally able to dispel any doubts about her loyalty while learning what it was that Tripp is keeping from her, and then having a relatively happy ending after they are saved from that situation.

We do learn that Tripp heard a scream while in the woods on the day that Mr Larkin died. That could be a long of things, including a fake out, Mr Larkin attacking someone, him being attacked by someone, or it could even then him and someone else (Charlotte or Shane) being attacked by someone else. This is a bit further explored when Brynn and Tripp go again to visit Mr Solomon and find his dead body (with his money box missing). Tripp falls into a kind of PTSD (?) trance where instead of being in that exact moment he is in the past and asking someone why they did something and asking them to stop screaming. Brynn calls the police, they get questioned separately and then the personal drama starts as the police officer interviewing Tripp tells him that Brynn is working for 'Motive', which he knows is the other organisation working on a story about Mr Larkin's death, which causes his fist to clench. Wow, so scary (but at the same time I am dreading seeing Brynn, who was so happy, realise that because she kept this secret for so long and because other things happened in the meantime that made this news a lot worse than it previously would have been, it isn't going to be easy for Tripp to get back to how he was before. Although she hadn't accepted her feelings for Tripp she was at least starting to realise that they existed, just a bit. And it is also going to prove Charlotte right, that she was someone he should have just stayed away from and not got involved with in the first place. Especially since she doesn't know about their past relationship).

The next thing we learn, even though it doesn't have a place within our mystery in regards to solving it right now, is the biggest bomb of them all. Mr Larkin moved to Brynn's school to be closer to his brother. We don't know who his brother is, and we don't know how that relates to his death but we do know that it has something to do with it, being such a massive bomb. I had forgotten about that call, that she had made to his old school (and about her getting shut down quickly) so I hadn't at all assumed that he actually was going to pass on the message to a teacher who knew him, but he did. The brother, it turns out, is someone in the same age group as Brynn, Tripp, Charlotte and Shane. It could potentially be the person who first shared the video around in class that called Shane a murderer.

It is then that the pieces start to click into place and everything starts to make sense (at least from the perspective of why Tripp was being so secretive and cut off his friendship with Brynn). Tripp's dad was the one who stole the money, (although he could have returned it if Tripp hadn't taken it) and Tripp wanted to put it back after learning that his father was being threatened by Mr Larkin but waited too long and Mr Larkin had already noticed. Although we don't know for certain who it was (we think it was Tripp's father) we do know that Shane and Charlotte weren't threatening Tripp, even if they must still be involved in the murder. That is instead of it being them threatening him to keep his mouth shut like we thought, well, at least how I thought, it is Tripp who coordinates everything and gets them to keep their stories consistent.

Tripp and Brynn are great together, even back then, which is why him keeping everything from her and cutting her off while assuming a lot causes this massive misunderstanding to happen where all this time he thought he was protecting his father but his father had nothing to do with the murders as he was with Brynn from before the murders happened to when the police called to tell him that his son had found a dead body. If only he had shared that with Brynn earlier, she would have been able to get rid of his doubts over who his father was. At the start, I talked about a wedge that was put between them, him and his father, and how his father wasn't the parental figure that he needed (even though he seemed like a relatively good parent who was trying his hardest) but learning that the reason for this is that he thought his father was a murderer makes much more sense but is also a lot sadder.

This then leaves the question as to who the real killer is and how the young, Tripp age student who was Mr Larkin's younger brother fit in together. It also now raises fresh questions about Shane, especially when talking about his behaviour leading up to Tripp seeing Mr Larkin dead. Brynn and Tripp start to try and put their information together and figure out who it is, but if I have learnt anything about reading a Karen McManus book it is that trusting that her characters are going to figure things out is the wrong thing to do. They only ever figure things like this out after it is already too late, which is what I think is most likely going to happen here. I don't think the killer is going to be revealed as Shane, it is way too obvious as well and would be a pretty anticlimactic ending to the novel. One person who I hadn't considered (who, the ages don't make sense to be the brother but it would be a pretty interesting twist) is if the killer was her Uncle Nick. It was mentioned off-handedly by Tripp but it actually holds some merit in my opinion, even if that merit is more wishful thinking rather than based on any concrete evidence.

Ellie sets a trap for the one defacing the posters of Mr Larkin by using a magic kit and putting ink on them that can only be seen under a certain light. Since moving back Brynn has had two different constant friends. One being Nadia and the other being the one who was defacing the posters of Mr Larkin, Mason, who turns out to be Dexter's son, and Mr Larkin's brother. (He wasn't the one who killed him though).

What we do learn. from Shane, is that Mr Larkin was arguing with someone in the forest about money. That someone being Nick Gallagher, Brynn's Uncle. It also wasn't him who killed Mr Larkin (how can we trust him? Because Brynn knows, for certain, for sure, for everything, that he didn't do it just by looking at him. Sure) which is another fakeout and means the actual reveal has to be good (which I'm not sure if it can) otherwise the ending isn't going to live up to what it has been building up to.

Dexter also ends up jumping into the fray, having tracked down Brynn through her number plate, and kidnaps Ellie. They end up having a nice little conversation while being held at gunpoint and end up escaping with their lives, although they are all injured and Dexter has vanished (Sike, he died).

The actual, real (maybe) person who killed Mr Larkin?! Drum roll, please. It was (maybe) Charlotte!

The theory is that she thought that Shane was Mr Larkin's brother, not Mason, so when she heard Mr Larkin threaten his brother she devised a plan to report him to the principal, which backfired on her as Nick found the letter. After seeing his change in the woods she acted on instinct and ended up killing him accidentally before hiding and then pretending that nothing happened. It would explain why she was the one who was most freaked out about Mr Larkin being dead.

Do I believe it? Yes

Do I think that she did it? Yes

Do I think that Mr Larkin was a horrible person? Maybe

Do I think he deserved it? Yes

It might be horrible to say, but the fact that he was about to bring his abusive father back into his mother and brother's life just is a horrible thing to do. Charlotte stopped a more horrible thing from happening by doing that and I commend her on that. Additionally, before you go and say that he was being groomed since birth, and was probably mentally abused a lot by his father, yes I do agree but since he was 25/26 when he died that makes all of his actions inexcusable. At some point, you have to have responsibility for your own actions, and since he didn't I have no sympathy.

Overall, I liked this book. It was a fun read, one that was a lot more cohesive in the middle parts than some of Karen's other books, but one where the reveal wasn't anything crazy but did make complete sense and still was relatively satisfying. It was an overall success, and one I would definitely recommend to you, especially if you liked some of her previous books. I can tell that she is getting better as a writer and hope she continues on this upward trajectory, getting to a point where she can include twists like in 'One of Us is Lying' and 'One of Us is Next' where the ending twists had me rethinking my life, even if less 'realistic' (I always hate the term realistic being used in books because if an event occurred, as long as it can or has happened, (or even if the likelihood of it happening is so small it is basically impossible) we can be thrown into a situation where we are following the only time it happened in history, which I why I love books and how 'unrealistic' they are).

8.6/10