Blending a modern murder thriller with numerous respectful nods to classic mystery stories, The Agathas is a thoroughly entertaining, well-written read.

I love the juxtaposition of the very different teenage lead characters, Iris and Alice, who each struggle with their own personal problems but attempt to set them aside when another’s life is at stake. Both girls are cleverly established and then develop and deepen as the story progresses until I was left pining for another ‘Agathas’ investigation as soon as this one was resolved.

The side characters were less fleshed out generally, but still showed a lot of potential for development in future stories. Have I mentioned that I really want there to be future stories?!

Some of the issues handled as the murder mystery plot unfolds are potentially triggering – especially the issues of domestic abuse and teen relationship violence – but the way they are handled feels authentic and sympathetic (and there are resources at the back of the book for those who have been affected by the issues raised).

I got a real ‘Twin Peaks’ vibe (minus the supernatural!) when reading this novel and enjoyed how this slightly old-fashioned atmosphere contrasted with the use of mobile phones, internet searches and social media during the investigation – a perfect balance of old and new, classic and modern, familiar and fresh.

My only quibble at all was that Alice’s secret informer didn’t turn out to be who I had hoped, and I really can’t blame the authors for that one! Plus, who it was turned out to fit very nicely with some of the side plot (which is why they are the writers and I stick to reading!).

I am now following both of these authors in eager anticipation for more from this outsider investigative duo, and I suggest that if you enjoy well-plotted, engaging mystery stories then you should do likewise!


‘What would Agatha Christie do right now? Would she let them get to her? Run her out of the school? Is that what she did when her first husband cheated on her? Hell no. She squared her shoulders and became a multinational bestselling author.’

– Kathleen Glasgow & Liz Lawson


Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

Fate has brought two teenagers from different school tribes together, their worlds truly collide when a school friend goes missing and they don’t believe the police are on the right track. Alice & Iris may have had different reasons for starting their own investigation but getting at the truth can unite them if they don’t allow their own prejudices to get in the way.

I loved the contrast between Alice & Iris and their determination to get to the bottom of the secrets that encompass their community. Agatha Christie is one of my favourite authors so I was drawn to this book and I loved the references throughout the story from Alice. It is an entertaining mystery that will help ease young adult readers into more adult fiction.

This is an excellent book, a page turner that kept me hooked till the last page.
I felt for the characters, was intrigued by the mystery, and root for Alice and Iris.
It's YA because the MCs and other characters involved in the investigation are teenagers but the mystery is excellent, full of twists, and kept me guessing.
It's a mystery but it's also a story of solitude, of how adults don't listen or simply don't care for what the younger people are saying.
Nobody is caring about the disappearance of a teen ager, nobody cared for Iris when she denounced abused.
Alice run away, came back but nobody listened to her and her parents are filling the voids with very expensive presents.
Adults simply don't listen and they care even less as these are young women.
I loved the idea of two young detective inspired by Agatha Christie and I loved their stories and the storytelling.
It's a book that should be read by adults and can be enjoyed by people of all ages.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

LOVED THIS!! I'm a huge Agatha Christie nerd and a huge fan of Kathleen Glasgow so I feel like this book was made for me. Even if you are not a fan of Christie and/or Glasgow, that's fine you dont need to be. This is a brilliant twisty turny mystery, like Mean Girls meets Agatha Christie. Total page turner.

The Agathas is a YA Murder mystery set in a California town where the citizens are divided between the haves and have nots. Alice is one of the haves, but after she went missing last summer after her boyfriend dumped her, her friends don’t want to know her. Iris doesn’t live in a mansion and her mum works in a bar. She’s been assigned to tutor Alice. Then Brooke, one of the popular girls who used to be Alice’s friends, disappears. Soon the two girls are investigating - Alice because her ex boyfriend is the main suspect and Iris, well because Brooke’s grandmas is offering a reward. Can they figure out what really happened the night that Brooke Donovan disappeared?

I really enjoyed this - it’s a twisty high school Murder mystery with an interestingly flawed cast of characters and a crime fighting duo who bring out interesting sides to each other. Also I’m so glad I’m not a teenager now and that I didn’t go to American high school. It sounds awful.

I didn't think Kathleen Glasgow could get any better - I have loved every book she's written - but after teaming up with Liz Lawson to bring us The Agathas, I must tell you I am absolutely astounded.

The talent and beauty of this book is beyond works, and yet I must try to tell you just how much I loved each and every page. For it being a YA novel, I was engrossed the entire time and never felt like there was a dull moment. It was incredibly well written, with a wonderfully engaging plot and relatable characters. I can't wait for the next book by these two insanely talented authors.

What a ride this book was!

Currently I'm reading all the Agatha Christie's so thought I will take a break from one Agatha and treat myself to two, and I am so glad I did. Following Alice and Iris as they learn about one another and try to figure out the death of Alice's best friend Brooke, these two very different characters jump off the page and create a great chemistry that keeps you hooked from the beginning.

Plot wise, this book gets going really quickly. giving us our list of suspects and different pieces of evidence from a range of people, this book jumps right into the story and gives us a mystery Christie would be proud of, a young socialite murdered in an old castle? This would be such a perfect plot then and it's the perfect plot now in this book as it takes on a wild ride to find the unknown.

The characters really of course get this story. Alice and Iris are perfect leads who are flawed, yes, but these flaws are definitely help them work together yes, and maybe push each other a little bit and it's so so good. The cast is interesting, sometimes funny and very genuine and really builds the story into something that keeps you on the edge of your seat - I wouldn't call this a cosy mystery.

A really great read, it's a book that as soon as you start, you will have to see the end as soon as possible! Read this book!

(Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC for honest review).

Nancy drew, Karen McManus and Robin Stevens fans will absolutely love this book!
i was hooked from the title!
i read this in one sitting i was so compelled to finish it and really wanted to find out who did it.

fun! think the dead and the dark meets a good girl's guide to murder. exists in what feels like a little bubble world, it works for me. reminded me of my favorite teen sleuths like nancy drew and the scooby doo gang

A fun murder mystery/whodunnit book about a murdered high school girl whose ex-best friend and tutor try to find out who killed her.

I found the characters a bit empty, I probably would have liked the book more if I understood Alice a bit more, she started off strong but then remained the same throughout. I also would have probably liked it more if Steve remained in the story; he was an interesting character who I would have liked to join the girls in their adventures.

I found the murderer was well hinted at throughout and did not come out of nowhere in the reveal but also was not too obvious, with many red herrings thrown in to throw me off the scent.

I liked the depiction of the townspeople and the use of small town gossip to drive the plot forward.

I'm just going to say this, I flippin' loved The Agathas.

The Agathas is a slick YA murder mystery fiction which has elements of classic murder mystery with a delicious dollop of Scooby Doo.

The story focuses on unlikely duo Alice Ogilve - one of Castle Cove's beautiful people - who has a mystery of her own that she is keeping buried and the quirky Iris Adams - underdog, beautiful wierdo and someone who is desperate to leave Castle Cove as quickly as she can. They are thrown together and form an unlikely alliance to help solve the mystery of who killed Brooke Donovan.

Corruption, greed and love are all at the heart of this story and Glasgow and Lawson's perfect tone drags you up and down the garden path throwing in red herrings galore. At once you both believe that you can and will solve the mystery whilst equally slapping your head in absolute shock horror when you get it wrong.

I will shove The Agathas into everyone's hands.

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson is available now.

For more information regarding Kathleen Glasgow (@kathglasgow) please visit www.kathleenglasgowbooks.com.

For more information regarding Liz Lawson (@LzLwsn) please visit her Twitter and Instagram account.

For more information regarding Oneworld Publications (@OneworldNews) please visit www.oneworld-publications.com.

I really really wanted to love this book, but honestly I found myself getting bored quite a bit throughout this book.
I have read some of Kathleen Glasgow's previous books, but I have never read anything by Liz Lawson but I was really excited for this book after seeing the beautiful cover and reading the synopsis of this book.
After reading 30% of the book, I put this book down because I was bored but after a few weeks I decided to give it another go and decided that I would try to finish the book in one sitting.
This book was such a fast read and I did fly through it because the writing was so easy to read and fall into the story, but there was something a bit lackluster about this book.
I could not connect with any of the characters and did not really care for any of them, and was purely finishing this book in order to see what the ending of the book will be.
I don't know if this book is the first in a series but by the end of this book there was still a lot of unanswered questions, so I assume that maybe this book is the beginning of a series and these questions will be answered in future books.
Overall, I do think this book is worth a read if you have any interest in the synopsis but I don't think this book is for me.

Castle Cove is just an ordinary seaside town…with skeletons in its closet. Two young women have died in mysterious circumstances, while another went missing for a week. When an heiress from the local high school washes up dead, two local girls from different sides of the track form a deadly detective duo as adults blur lines and local police botch the investigation.

Alice Ogilvie is a popular, wealthy underachiever while Iris Adams is a poor but intelligent loner with a posse of nerd friends. When Iris is asked to tutor Alice by the school guidance counsellor, she jumps at the chance to make a few extra bucks. Alice, an Agatha Christie fan, soon becomes obsessed by her friend Brooke’s murder. Smelling a cosy little reward offered by the girl’s wealthy grandmother, Iris isn’t far behind and the ‘Agathas’ are born.

There is plenty to love about this story, the action and tension are high, Alice’s backstory provides an ongoing mystery, and the frustration of corrupt police and unreliable adults kept my knuckles firmly in the white zone. Iris’s backstory is also complex and will keep you guessing until the last chapter. There is humour, too, and all-too-real life dilemmas that firmly ground the story in the everyday making it even more chilling.

All the characters are brought to vivid life, even Dotty of Dotty’s Doughnuts jumps off the page. True to the eponymous detective, there are more red herrings than a fish supper – and delicious ones at that. There are a few winks and nods to popular culture for the sharp-eyed and enough teenage angst to bring you out in spots. I really liked the way the authors handled the social media aspect. Sometimes this can be so clunky, but it married up expertly with the story.

Kudos to Kathleen and Liz for pulling off the impossible (unless you’re David Levithan and Rachel Cohn) and co-writing a seamless and brilliantly energetic YA murder story. If you liked their own books, ‘Girl in pieces’ and ‘The lucky ones’, you’ll be in your element, and if you’re a Karen McManus or Holly Jackson fan you will surely be in seventh heaven. There are hints at another case for the Agathas, and I will be checking the socials for updates.
Thanks to NetGalley and Oneworld for the eARC : *****

Oh boy, are readers due a treat when this is released in May. Huge thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this before publication, and I’m hoping this isn’t the last we’ve heard of the Agathas.
Alice Ogilvie is a rich kid who has everything. She recently disappeared for five days, and nobody knows where she was in that time, but now she’s returned to school and is forced to have a tutor to make up her grades. Her tutor is Iris Adams, a girl who’s determined to leave Castle Cove as soon as she can for reasons she wants no one to know.
Before too long we see an unlikely friendship develop between our Agatha Christie-obsessed duo. Their unlikely friendship centres around their quest to find out exactly what happened to Alice’s ex-best friend when she disappeared after a Halloween party.
When Brooke’s body is discovered, the investigation becomes a little more serious. Those close to Brooke are implicated, and some aren’t but are definitely hiding something. Through some rather dubious means, Iris and Alice (and their own little Scooby gang) try to work out what happened.
From start to finish I found myself wholly immersed in these characters. Sassy, a little crazy, but definitely with their hearts in the right places, Iris and Alice are characters you can’t help but root for. The book has its fair share of darkness, and I’m really hoping that Glasgow and Lawson will treat us to further adventures from this group. From the sounds of it Castle Cove has more than its fair share of mysteries to be solved.

Any age Agatha Christie reader will enjoy the Christie references and quotes scattered throughout this California high school set murder mystery. Once the students are introduced and Brooke disappears the alternating voices of Iris and Alice (The Agathas) are engaging, and the book moves at the lively clip of a TV series, though definitely a tame PG.

This will be a big hit with my students! Murder mystery, spooky adventure with all the Agatha Christie vibes (QUEEN) make this a hugely enjoyable read

Fun, quirky, teen murder mystery. Some great characters. Fun Agatha Christie references. Strong Veronica Mars vibes (and indeed references that). Some of the characters (mains especially, but also Iris’ friends) could do with being a bit more fleshed out. Ending was a decent twist. It will make an EXCELLENT Netflix series of similar. Bit young in places and some of the prose was irritating. Teens will love it.

The Agathas was a pretty damn gripping read and a fantastic tribute to one of my favourite writers of all time.

Any book that pays homage to Agatha Christie instantly has my heart and the intricate plotting of The Agathas was worthy of the Queen of Crime herself. The way Glasgow and Lawson combined their fiendish brains together meant that a twisted concoction of secrets, alibis and red herrings was formed. In many ways, we have the classic Christie set-up of an isolated location, pretty closed in community and basically everyone having a reason to want someone gone. I loved the way they transported this to a Young Adult setting, creating this network of messed-up relationships and entanglements. The entire book is a love letter to the entire genre and its undisputed queen, but the way Christie’s books are also woven into the plot is ingenious. One of the characters is a big fan of her books and relates the events to plot points. This creates this meta, fantastically enjoyable humour and cheeky wink to the readers. It feels like a book that will go off and inspire a new generation to pick up her works.

That being said, this gem stands well on its own. Snippets of Christie are woven in, but this is a unique and well-crafted story. I loved how all of the narrative threads were pieced together into a complex and fascinating mystery. This was a tricksy little story with plenty of shocking twists and turns that kept me glued to the page.

The dual narrative is handled really well, adding enough seeds of doubt and unreliability in both our narrators. They’re flawed people dealing with their own secrets and trauma, but somehow you just root for them. Despite knowing they could be lying right to your face, you want to believe their version of events and for the truth to shine through. They both have such distinctive voices, with Iris’ snarky closed-off nature betraying a deeper survival instinct and a life spent running away from her past. Alice is cocooned in seemingly the perfect life of privilege, popularity and power but her troubles bubble just under the surface. The way the two of them interact is brilliant, with plenty of humourous dialogue and nuanced conversations about privilege, particularly in terms of wealth and class. Also, the wider supporting cast is fascinating, particularly the extra teammates for solving the mystery. I would happily read more books featuring this feisty firecrackers of a found family. The atmosphere between them all and the vibe created is a playful, fun and relaxed one, but they also always have one another’s backs. You get a modern-day Nancy Drew vibe of teenagers solving all the cases ignored and dismissed by the authorities.

On that note, this book really digs into the idea of the ‘perfect’ victim. It questions why some cases are seen as more worthwhile than other and how issues of privilege, race and class complicate this further. One death becomes national news, while another is forgotten and dismissed. The Agathas asks why justice is selective and dependent on the status of the victim. It also is a pretty feminist book, discussing why women’s testimonies are often ignored and dismissed as irrational or melodramatic. This is a pertinent and timely narrative, looking at recent news. Both protagonists and their suspicions are dismissed for being teenage girls. Lawson and Glasgow interrogate why that is in a thought-provoking and complicated analysis that is further expanded by questions of privilege and victimhood.

The Agathas is a layered mystery, combining thrilling plot lines, fascinating characters and important questions surrounding the politics of justice and victimhood.

I'm afraid this YA novel was too juvenile for me so please bear in mind that my review is not from the target audience.

Despite the plot moving along at a good pace (particularly in the second half of the book) there was too little character development. Iris and Alice were so interchangeable that I had to keep checking whose POV it was supposed to be. At the start it didn't seem to matter to Alice that her life-long best friend had disappeared, she didn't even seem particularly moved when Brooke's body was found. Towards the end of the book both Alice and Iris started to feel some real emotion and the book became more interesting but I'm afraid it was too little too late.

Iris and Alice are unlikely partners in solving a mystery about the disappearance of one of their peers. Set against the backdrop of a fictional Malibu-like town where the absurdly rich and working class live side by side in a very small town atmosphere, most of the focus is on social hierarchy and feeling like no one really understands you.

Unfortunately this book seems to have needed another round or two through the editing process. It often changes tone and veers in and out of Middle Grade, very young YA, and stereotypical late high school YA. It tries to be a lot of things, and so everything seems rough-edged and watered down. The writing feels very artificial, as if the author has not actually talked to anyone the age of their characters in quite a long time. I hate to sound so harsh, but this one really fell flat for me. The premise is a good one, it just needs more editing and maybe some target audience readers for feedback.