A review by oashackelford
Nothing More to Tell by Karen M. McManus

4.0

Four years ago Brynn's favorite teacher was murdered and his murder was never solved. Brynn, a high schooler trying to break into journalism, has recently moved back to her hometown and wants to know why her teacher was murdered and wants to put the whole story on a true crime podcast, called Motive.

Four years ago Tripp found his teacher's body in the woods, and he knows something that he's not telling the police. Can he keep Brynn's nose out of it, or will he have to come clean about what he saw that day?

I think that the more books that Karen McManus writes, the better that she gets at creating scenarios where the people involved really wouldn't want to tell the Police because the consequences really could ruin their lives. I thought this whodunnit was written very well because I was struggling to figure out who did it the entire time, and I thought that the explanation of who did it and why worked, but I didn't agree with the full execution of everything.

Spoiler

I didn't like that Charlotte just gets away with it. I didn't think there was a satisfying reason for the cops to stop looking into the murder. Like, Brynn shows up and starts digging and raises all these questions that make it pretty clear that a drifter wasn't responsible for Mr. Larkin's murder, and all of these people start talking to Motive about their roles in it, and Tripp and Shane start telling the police the truth and somehow they can't figure out that it was Charlotte? I am just not buying that. I don't feel like everyone would have just let it go like that. That part didn't feel really realistic to me. I think even if McManus had written in some reason that the police would stop looking into it, like because it was a cold case or something, then even that would have been easier to buy. Also, did Lisa Marie kill Mr. Solomon? The book never really goes back and addresses that at all. I kind of hope that for Trip's sake something does happen to Lisa Marie so that she can't come near him anymore. I thought that the murder was good, but I thought that the execution of the end is pretty unbelievable.