{I've Been Reading} Dead Fake

 Jammed With Secrets by Selina Hill

I enjoyed the first book in this new series featuring Sadie Cruz, a celebrity chef whose reputation took an awful turn after a food critic died after sampling her restaurant's Heavenly Duck. Now she's in the spotlight again when a member of a 90s boyband is found dead in  her food trailer with one of her jam filled heart cookies smeared all over him.  It's an entertaining plot with a likeable protagonist, even if it sometimes felt like her investigation circled, going over the same information multiple times.   

Dead Fake by Vincent Ralph

Swipe to Die is an app that came out of nowhere and quickly became the most popular thing around. Just sign up with your email address, answer a couple of questions, and then watch an AI video of your own gory death. It's all innocent fun, right? This book takes all of the elements of an enjoyable slasher movie and makes them better by adding little hints of backstory that just wouldn't work in a film. The town of Bleak Haven has a troubled past, evidenced by the memorial wall at the local high school. One of the administrators is apparently a final girl, having survived a serial killer years earlier. Ava, the protagonist, is haunted by dark events in her own family's past, which makes her well equippped to try to stop whoever is behind Swipe or Die. I was extremely happy to see that this is the first book in a series about the town. 

The Room in the Attic by T. M. Logan

I don't know how this author managed to make an outdated flip phone so ominous, but I was holding my breath and wanting to yell at the characters to stop messing with it. It starts with Adam exploring a seam in the wooden paneling of their new residence and discovering a hidden space behind the wall. The tiny room is furnished with a chair and dresser and the dresser drawers contain an odd assortment of unremarkable objects. Told amost entirely from Adam's point of view, this book creates an uneasy sense of dread that I couldn't resist. 

Disclosure -- The publisher provided me with an advance review copy.