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Reviewed by: Looking for Smoke by K. A. Cobell Natalie Berglind Cobell, K. A. Looking for Smoke. Heartdrum/HarperCollins, 2024 416p Trade ed. ISBN 9780063318670 19. 99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780063318694 12. 99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 When teenager Rayanne Arnoux went missing from the Blackfeet Reservation, her friend group fractured as they helplessly watched police fumble the case with apathy and incompetence. Their relationships are strained even more when they all become suspects when another girl, Samantha White Tail, is found strangled to death during the tribe's yearly four-day celebration. The four teens—Mara, the outsider as the newest girl to the rez; Loren, Rayanne's sister and Sam's ex-BFF; Brody, a jerk of a playboy; and Eli, who's secretly the sole caretaker for his younger sister—must juggle their broken relationships with each other in addition to clearing their names and bringing the killer to justice. Alternating first-person perspectives are occasionally indistinct, but the thrill of keeping track of who knows what clues will make it a worthy read for sleuthy, detail-oriented teens. All the hallmarks of a page-turning thriller are here, with unreliable alibis aplenty and clues interspersed at a compelling pace, as well as a final, satisfying showdown with a twist that's the perfect culmination of the quest for justice. Hanging over the thriller elements is the tragic but realistic length to which the characters have to go to seek and mete out justice on their own as they track down incriminating images on social media and perform stakeouts to get answers the cops should already have. A note from the author lays out the statistics of the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and addresses the complexities of representing Blackfeet characters authentically. Copyright © 2024 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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