If you’d been framed for your stepsister’s murder and dropped on a former prison island to participate in a reality show to prove your innocence, how far could you go? If the premise sounds bonkers, that’s because Gretchen McNeil’s Murder Trending books are a little bonkers – but in a very good way!
The Murder Trending series begins with #murdertrending. After being framed for her stepsister’s murder, Dee Guerrera is dropped in Alcatraz 2.0 – a reality show where convicted murderers have to defend themselves from “Paniacs,” crazily dressed up killers with permission to hunt them down as punishment for their crimes.
Dee has two goals – to survive, and to prove that she’s innocent. McNeil’s books takes readers on some gory twists and turns, as her devious mind comes up with some very interesting escapes. Having read many of McNeil’s previous books, I’ve always admired her ability to incorporate social media and chat rooms in a nature way, and this reality show at times feels all too real (and plausible).
In the second book, #murderfunding, Becca Martinello is mourning the death of one of her moms in a car crash. But when a strange girl, Stef, shows up and tells Becca that her mom was really a Paniac on Alcatraz 2.0, Becca has to find out for herself. She decides to try out for Who Wants to Be a Paniac? – the reality casting show to find the next authorized killer for Alcatraz.
When people start getting murdered, she figures out that something more is going on.
#noescape is the third book in Gretchen McNeil’s Murder Trending series. It just came out and I grabbed it at the library and read it in one day. This book is a prequel which helps explain how Alcatraz 2.0 came to be. It uses the popular escape rooms to draw links to the challenges faced by contestants in the first book.
17-year-old Persey wins an escape room contest and ends up going to the greatest escape room ever challenge in Las Vegas. She wants to escape more than a room – she needs help getting free of her abusive father and the contest’s grand prize would be a good start.
But once the contest starts it becomes clear that the contestants weren’t randomly selected. They begin to die off in a series of bizarre “accidents” as the escape rooms “malfunction.” Persey knows she needs to figure things out before she’s the next victim.
Note – these books are YA horror, so there’s gore and murder. They were a great Halloween read, and I felt fit into the YA genre.
Each book has both queer representation and characters of color. I love the twists and turns – McNeil always surprises me, which is honestly hard to do. Even though I figured out some of the ending of #noescape, she still had a trick up her sleeve! The books are fun, fast-paced, gory romps that I highly recommend.
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