A review by quercine
Ten by Gretchen McNeil

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Did I solve it within the first approximately 75 pages? Yes. Did I have an unprecedented amount of fun getting there? Absolutely. Maybe it’s because this is written and set around the time I was a senior in high school. Maybe it’s because I liked Meg so much. Maybe it’s because Meg and Minnie’s toxic friendship was like a terrifying funhouse mirror of my own toxic high school friendship/love triangle. It doesn’t matter I just had fun reading it.

The clues pointing to TJ were so fun because my original theory was right but I was starting to doubt myself in the same way Meg was. I thought he was maybe a Billy Loomis type, but really it was a Derek Feldman situation (right down to her shooting him). Honestly, I think this book is pretty much a perfect mashup of And Then There Were None, Clue (1985 movie), and Scream 2 which are two of my favorite movies and a novel I only know the premise of but is on my TBR for the year. Anyway.

Part way though the audio book I went crazy and ended up finding a physically copy so I could annotate it with notes about my theories and 2010s teen slang. Which is just to say I loved this so much I had to dissect it along the way.