Dead Fake
Bleak Haven #1
by Vincent Ralph

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA horror thriller

When a new trend takes over Ava’s school that lets students Swipe to Die, Ava seems to be the only one who wants nothing to do with it. It’s been ten years since her uncle murdered three people before dying himself, so death isn’t a game to her. Then fake videos of students being murdered start to appear, and Ava is appalled at how excited her fellow students are over the pretend tragedies. But when a student dies for real, in the same way he did in his fake video, Ava can’t help but look for patterns and answers, even if it means dredging up the not-so-buried past.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and was caught up in the slasher elements enough to have a hard time putting it down in the last third or so. It took a little bit to get going, but even early on, the hints about not only Ava’s uncle, but apparently quite a few mass murderers or serial killers in this town’s past intrigued me. There’s clearly a whole background here that I wanted to know more of. (There are 3 more books either already released or planned that are set in this same town, so maybe more of the town’s bloody history will be explored.) Some tropes of this genre were subverted in ways that I appreciated, like the town’s sheriff actually giving credence to Ava’s thoughts and discoveries.

I have to admit that the reveal of the killer was a little bit of a letdown for me, at least partly because there were some clues peppered here and there that seemed to be leading one way…only for them to be completely unrelated. Red herrings are one thing, but this felt a bit too deliberate. Plus, the killer’s revealed motivations and actions taken over time are either underwhelming or unrealistic. But even with these things, the story was overall pretty good, and I am definitely going to read more of this series. There is a little bit of language, including the f-word several times, but not nearly as much as I’ve read in other books in the same genre. And there is no sexual content that I can recall, beyond the mention of the MC’s friend and her new boyfriend making out a lot. Also incredibly light for the genre, which I appreciate. I’d recommend this for people who enjoy slasher fiction or thrillers in the teen/YA age range.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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