In the Blood

Gr 9 Up–A suspenseful thriller told in three perspectives. Tessa, freshly 18, is gifted an AncestryDNA testing kit for her birthday by her best friend and fellow senior classmate, El. With her brown hair and eyes, Tessa has never felt as though she fit with the rest of her blonde-haired, blue-eyed family. In her hometown of Portland, an unknown serial killer has been linked to murdering at least six women in their homes over the past 16 years. When Tessa takes the test, the police receive a notification that there is a potential DNA match. Tessa, El, and Victor, a Latine boy in Tessa’s biology class, are great representations of a loyal friend group. Beside Tessa’s, the second point of view is ­Keisha’s; a Black detective and police officer assigned to the Portland Phantom’s case, she is shown to be driven and self-motivated. The last point of view is Quentin’s, the Portland Phantom, who is presumed white. Quentin, an unsettling character, is a police officer who groomed a student as a school resource officer and targets young women to kill. Though it is not gory and his murders are all closed door, the inside of his mind could be unsettling to students who have not been exposed to crime books—though it could also be a good introduction. There are also components of grooming, cults, racism, and violence, as well as a closed-door reference to sexual encounters. ­