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How to Survive Your Murder
Cover of How to Survive Your Murder
How to Survive Your Murder
Borrow Borrow
Scream meets Happy Death Day in this terrifying stand-alone horror novel from YA scream queen Danielle Valentine.
"This terrifying book reads like a horror movie. No, wait. It has the suspense and shocks and screams of TEN horror movies in one. Great nasty fun!" —R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street

Alice Lawrence is the sole witness in her sister’s murder trial.
And in the year since Claire’s death, Alice’s life has completely fallen apart. Her parents have gotten divorced, she’s moved into an apartment that smells like bologna, and she is being forced to face her sister’s killer and a courtroom full of people who doubt what she saw in the corn maze a year prior.
Claire was an all-American girl, beautiful and bubbly, and a theater star. Alice was a nerd who dreamed of becoming a forensic pathologist and would rather stay at home to watch her favorite horror movies than party. Despite their differences, they were bonded by sisterhood and were each other’s best friends.
Until Claire was taken away from her.
On the first day of the murder trial, as Alice prepares to give her testimony, she is knocked out by a Sidney Prescott look-alike in the courthouse bathroom. When she wakes up, it is Halloween night a year earlier, the same day Claire was murdered. Alice has until midnight to save her sister and find the real killer before he claims another victim.
Scream meets Happy Death Day in this terrifying stand-alone horror novel from YA scream queen Danielle Valentine.
"This terrifying book reads like a horror movie. No, wait. It has the suspense and shocks and screams of TEN horror movies in one. Great nasty fun!" —R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street

Alice Lawrence is the sole witness in her sister’s murder trial.
And in the year since Claire’s death, Alice’s life has completely fallen apart. Her parents have gotten divorced, she’s moved into an apartment that smells like bologna, and she is being forced to face her sister’s killer and a courtroom full of people who doubt what she saw in the corn maze a year prior.
Claire was an all-American girl, beautiful and bubbly, and a theater star. Alice was a nerd who dreamed of becoming a forensic pathologist and would rather stay at home to watch her favorite horror movies than party. Despite their differences, they were bonded by sisterhood and were each other’s best friends.
Until Claire was taken away from her.
On the first day of the murder trial, as Alice prepares to give her testimony, she is knocked out by a Sidney Prescott look-alike in the courthouse bathroom. When she wakes up, it is Halloween night a year earlier, the same day Claire was murdered. Alice has until midnight to save her sister and find the real killer before he claims another victim.
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
    5.2
  • Lexile:
    740
  • Interest Level:
    UG
  • Text Difficulty:
    3 - 4


Excerpts-
  • From the cover Halloween night, last year

    Mark Evans was practically cradling the chain saw. You’d think it was his baby. “I don’t know, Chloe; that doesn’t seem safe.”
    “It won’t even have a chain,” Chloe pointed out. “A chain saw can’t hurt anyone if there’s no chain.”
    “It’s still heavy. And loud. And what about all that . . . what’s it called? Exhaust? You can inhale it and stuff.”
    Chloe closed her eyes for a moment, frustration building inside her. Mark was the biggest guy on the track team. Maybe even the biggest guy in their year. Since when was he such a wuss?
    To be fair, she hadn’t chosen him because he was brave or whatever. She’d chosen him because of his shoulders. Mark had the greatest shoulders at Omaha East, all broad and muscular. She figured they’d look seriously sick holding a chain saw, like the guy in that freaky chain saw movie, Jason, or whatever his name was.
    “Can’t we just, like, play a recording of chain saw noises?” Mark asked. “Or I could make the noise with my mouth, like this.” He demonstrated how he might make chain saw noises by blowing air through his lips and kind of clicking his tongue.
    Chloe was at a loss for words. What were you supposed to say when a guy made chain saw noises at you?
    Chloe had known, from the moment she convinced her parents to let her rent out Lacy Farms for her Halloween party, that she wanted scary chain saw guys chasing people through the corn maze. Otherwise it was just a pathetic party in a cornfield. Why could no one else see her vision?
    “Mark,” Chloe said very carefully. “Listen to me. You’re going to turn the chain saw on, and you’re going to chase people through the maze, and you’re going to be fucking scary while you do it, or else I’ll have to tell everyone about that thing you do when you kiss.”
    Mark had swirled his tongue around in her mouth when they made out at Kylie Mack’s birthday last year, like his tongue was a weird, wet helicopter propeller. It was seriously disgusting.
    Mark paled, then swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”
    Thank God, Chloe thought as headlights swept through the corn, alerting her to the arrival of her first guests. She loved this part, the beginning—of—the—party part. Absolutely anything could happen now. She checked her phone screen just in time to watch the numbers switch from 6:59 to 7:00.
    Showtime.
    The genius of her party was this: people had to go through the scary corn maze and get chased by chain saw dudes before they were rewarded with booze and music at the center of the field. Chloe was pretty proud of it. She knew everything was set up, but she still double—checked that the camping lanterns were all lit, that the keg was ready, that the band was getting its gear together. She greeted her first guests, did a shot, and then did a bonus shot (what the hell, it was her party), and that’s when she overheard someone talking about how the corn maze wasn’t even scary, because Mark Evans hadn’t turned his chain saw on; he was just making the chain saw noise by blowing air through his lips.
    She felt her jaw clench.
    You’ve got to be kidding me.
    The sun had fully set by this point, and the only light came from the camping lanterns circling the edges of the clearing behind her, gaslit flames flickering like fireflies. Chloe beelined for the maze but hesitated when she reached the entrance. It was darker than she’d expected it to be, a lot darker than...
Reviews-
  • Kirkus

    June 15, 2022
    Reliving the worst day of her life offers a teenager the chance to change her murdered sister's fate. Alice is your typical horror movie-loving high school student, an aspiring forensic pathologist in Omaha, Nebraska, who knows all the best movies and all the details of their gruesome murders. Her world is turned upside down on Halloween night, however, when cinematic gore enters real life, and she finds classmate Chloe in a corn maze with her arm cut off. Attempting to flee from the maze to get help, Alice then witnesses her sister, Claire, die at the hands of college student Owen Maddox. Now getting ready to serve as a witness at Maddox's trial one year later, she has been inundated by people who think he's innocent, including a look-alike of Sidney Prescott from the Scream franchise who gives her the worst gift possible. After being hit on the head, Alice is thrown back a year and forced to live through the day her sister died, but there is a catch: If Alice can solve the mystery of who attacked Chloe, everything she changes during that night will remain, offering her a chance to save her sister. This book offers readers strong pacing that parallels that of slasher films, with a dash of mystery and a pinch of meta-horror, making it hard to put down. Main characters are White, and there is some diversity in race and sexuality in the supporting cast. A delightfully twisted story. (Horror. 12-18)

    COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    July 1, 2022
    Grades 11-12 Alice is an expert on murder--at least those that happen in the movies. But no movie could have prepared her for her sister Claire's very real murder at the hands of a chainsaw-wielding maniac. One year later, a sullen, distant Alice is set to testify against Claire's killer. But just before the trial begins, she is attacked by a strange girl who knocks her out. When Alice awakens, she is somehow back in the past with a chance to alter Claire's fate--and hers along with it. But can Alice stop the killer in time to change the future? With this paean to Scream and the self-aware slashers of the 1990s, Valentine has woven a twisty mystery worthy of sequels. The action is relentless, which helps smooth over some of the more implausible plot developments, and a thread of magic runs through the story, making it unique enough to defy predictions before the fateful finale. Due to violent imagery, this is a book for older readers, but it will absolutely satisfy thriller lovers.

    COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    July 25, 2022
    Like most of the characters in Valentine’s gruesome horror debut, academically gifted Omaha East High School junior Alice Lawrence is a true-crime and slasher-film enthusiast. Alice and her older sister, Claire, 18, are invited to Chloe Bree’s Halloween party at a corn maze, and they’re excited to immerse themselves in the holiday’s eerie ambiance, until things turn deadly. Chloe appears in the middle of the maze with her arm cut off, and Alice stumbles upon a wounded Owen Maddox, who subsequently murders Claire in front of her. A year later, Alice no longer talks to her surviving friends, and her parents have split up. While attending Owen’s murder trial, she’s accidentally knocked unconscious and catapulted a year into the past. Suddenly, Claire is alive again, and this time around, Alice is determined to keep last Halloween from repeating itself. An intriguingly meta plot shift makes for an ambiguous resolution. Nevertheless, Valentine successfully imbues this slasher-flick-worthy novel, grounded by a propulsive mystery and fierce heroine, with ample amounts of ghastly gore, foreboding atmosphere, and plenty of scares. Alice and Claire read as white, and there is racial diversity throughout. Ages 12–up. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, ICM Partners.

  • School Library Journal

    August 1, 2022

    Gr 9 Up-Alice is obsessed with horror movies; she is starting a podcast that intersects true crime and horror movies with two of her best friends. But, on Halloween Alice's life turns into a real-life slasher movie when she witnesses her sister's murder. One year later, on the day of the murderer's trial, a Sidney Prescott look-alike sends Alice back in time to the night of the murder with instructions to learn the truth. Alice knows what she saw that night-Owen Trevor Maddox is the killer-but as the death toll grows and new evidence emerges, Alice comes face to face with suspects she never would have imagined. Once Alice is sent back in time, the plot unfolds much like that of a slasher film, making for a fast, hair-raising, and at times gruesome read. There are a few twists that, while not hard to discern, add to the atmosphere of uncertainty throughout the novel. Though readers may find themselves frustrated at Alice's stubbornness and unwillingness to see the truth, the author's choice to narrate through her perspective creates a high stakes and emotionally fraught thriller. All main characters read white, but many secondary characters are diverse. VERDICT A must read for slasher fans, and sure to delight any readers looking for a thrill.-Mariah Smitala

    Copyright 2022 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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    Penguin Young Readers Group
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Danielle Valentine
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