Queen of the Tiles
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
They Wish They Were Us meets The Queen’s Gambit in this “stunning…unforgettable” (Publishers Weekly) thriller set in the world of competitive Scrabble, where a teen girl is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages.
CATALYST
13 points
noun: a substance that speeds up a reaction without itself changing
When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It seems that even though Najwa is trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet.
But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All’s fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it.
As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bringing to mind The Queen's Gambit, Alkaf's (The Weight of Our Sky) intense Malaysia-set murder mystery finds brown-skinned hijabi Najwa Bakri, 16, returning to the Scrabble tournament where her best friend, "Queen of the Tiles" Trina Low, died during a match one year prior. Still recovering from the trauma of Trina's unexplainable sudden death, and navigating anxiety, panic attacks, and dissociative amnesia, Najwa is determined to become the new Scrabble royal in Trina's honor. Najwa's not the only one, though. Trina's hot-tempered former boyfriend Mark, Mark's reserved ex-girlfriend Puteri, distant and calculating Josh, and Trina's bubbly childhood friend Yasmin, all 16, are also after the title. But when cryptic anagrams start posting to Trina's Instagram, and secrets about last year's tournament and the high-stakes world of competitive Scrabble come to a head, the group must decipher the anagrams and confront the mysterious circumstances behind Trina's death. Clever chapter openings feature words alongside their Scrabble point values, and their definitions foreshadow the action in this carefully plotted drama that explores coping with loss as well as grief's sometimes frustratingly nonlinear progression. Ages 12–up.
