GED instructor Kendra Clayton’s high school days were nothing to brag about. So she’s not too thrilled when on top of having to take a class to renew her teaching certificate or be fired, she gets roped into serving on her high school’s reunion committee.Spending time with her former classmates is even less fun than having a root canal. Then to make matters worse, Kendra and the other committee members start receiving strange messages and having freak accidents. When one of the accidents results in a death, Kendra is convinced it’s murder. Unfortunately, neither the reunion committee nor the police take her seriously.To try and prevent another death—and to keep from worrying about all the time her sweetie, Carl, has been spending with his scheming ex-wife—Kendra digs into the lives of her fellow committee members and uncovers enough secrets, lies, and betrayal to make her head spin. When a second murder occurs, Kendra realizes she needs to watch her back in her search for the truth before a killer turns her into another buried secret.
Angela Henry is an Amazon Charts bestselling and award-winning author of twisty mysteries, thrillers, and urban fantasy. A retired library reference specialist, she’s the author of the Kendra Clayton mystery series and the Xavier Knight series, as well as the thrillers The Perfect Affair, Her Pretty Lies, The Family Lies, and The Paris Secret. She also writes middle-grade fiction as Angie Kelly. Angela lives in Ohio with her husband and their spoiled Chiweenie, Gidget.
I enjoyed this book and I'm becoming as much of a fan of Kendra Clayton's character as I am of this author's writing style. I enjoyed the realistic, witty, yet suspenseful writing style and I'll be looking for more books from this author as I think this is my 3rd or 4th book from her.
This is a good story and written by a terrific, imaginative writer. But the formatting is a mess with block paragraphs in the body between indented paragraphs, and there are terrible, silly spelling/comprehension errors (the word you are looking for is "conscience," not "conscious" -- the first is a noun and the second is an adjective).
The characters are engaging, the dialogue interesting and the plot not terribly obvious. I would have given more stars, if only the book had been formatted correctly and proofread. This looked like a vanity press book, when it was entirely publishable through regular means. It wasn't in desperate need of an editor (though an editor might have fixed the prologue/epilogue problem, which seems to be a standard issue in self-published fiction from what I've read so far), but a proofreader would have been a great help.
Maybe it's mean to pick on something as minor as proofreading, but if you pulled a book off the bookstore shelf, read a few lines and noted that a character's "conscious was bothered," would you pay money for the book? Or you noticed that the author thinks the tummy medicine is Pepto Bismo, not Pepto Bismol? Or that a financial advisor calls the retirement plan a "four hundred one K"?
Professionalism is important. Errors detract from that. It makes me sad, because this is a fun, engaging mystery and I wanted to stay rooted in it, not be knocked out by a non-word like "distain." ("Disdain." The word is "disdain.")
I enjoyed this book very much. I didn't think I would get into a "traditional" mystery but I enjoyed how Henry kept the reader guessing. This book is fourth in a series about the protagonist, Kendra Clayton, but I have not read the first three books. However, it appears each title is a stand alone. I liked Kendra's character because she is an ordinary woman, dealing with her love life, and visiting her mother's house for dessert when something is on her mind, but what makes her story worth telling is her curiosity about who done it. I would highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy mystery, and also readers who are looking for a title by an African American author.
Kendra wasn't popular in High School so when she gets roped into serving on the reunion committee she is not happy about it. Member of the committee start getting strange messages and having accidents but Kendra thinks that one accident is really a murder. She has to convince others and do some investigating before she is the next victim. Pretty good mystery and it was an interesting read.
Schooled In Lies is a delightful and witty modern cozy mystery. The 4th in the Kendra Clayton mystery series. Schooled in lies makes for a delightful afternoon of reading.
Hard to read a book based in 1997 but it has far too many references to technology that just wasn't there in 97. Like cell phones and laptops. These were not common for everyone as they are now.