Pride or Die
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When the members of an LGBTQ+ club find themselves accidentally framed for attempted murder, it's up to them to clear their names before it's too late in “this dark and comedic mystery [which] deftly explores the gray areas between right and wrong, successfully addressing the complexity of people’s characters.” –Kirkus
It’s kind of hard to graduate high school when you’re the prime suspect in an attempted murder.
Seventeen-year-old Eleanora Finkel just wants to finish her senior year and get the hell out of Texas. But when her LGBTQ+ club meeting inconveniently coincides with an attack on the school’s head cheerleader, she and her friends find themselves in the hot seat.
In order to clear their names and ensure the survival of their club for future queer teens, they’ll have to track down the real culprit themselves. Unfortunately, Eleanora is far from a professional detective; she’s riddled with anxiety, annoyingly attracted to the case’s cute victim, and her trusty crochet hook feels insufficient for fighting off a killer. But if her chaotic friend group can't sleuth their way out of an entire freaking murder mystery, they might just become the next targets.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the founder of the Texas Hillview High LGBTQ+ Club, 17-year-old Eleanor Finkel has spent most of her high school career holding the group together through sheer force of will. The club is important to her, and she wanted to create a safe space "so that people like us could find one another, support one another, and know that they're not alone in the world." But with graduation on the horizon, she's struggling to figure out how to bring in new people to keep the alliance going. Then Eleanor and three other club members—Tyler, Salim, and Noah—are implicated in the violent assault of cheerleader Kenley. Now the four teens, with help from on-the-mend Kenley, must work together to clear their names or risk jeopardizing the club's—and their own—future. Using arch prose, debut author Montblanc candidly depicts the queer protagonists' experiences living "in a town full of ‘traditional' families with bigoted values." An unlikely romance and splashes of gallows humor add playful energy to this clever mystery. Eleanor is white, and supporting characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 13–up.
