Marnie Wells practices tasseomancy, divination with tea leaves. Months after the disappearance of a girl named Andrea, Andrea’s best friend, Matt, seeks Marnie out. Matt’s been receiving cryptic emails from someone claiming to be Andrea and doesn’t know whether to believe it’s her. Marnie finds herself drawn to Matt and colliding with the wider circle of friends Andrea was part of, all of them wealthy kids at the upscale high school that Marnie attends only because her grandmother teaches there. Although Andrea’s never been found, the police believe the emails are a cruel hoax. Marnie isn’t sure. She also isn’t sure if Matt can be trusted and the images in the leaves, although open to interpretation, are unsettling. Then Marnie discovers Andrea knew Jimmie, a former friend of Marnie’s brother. Everyone has always considered Jimmie troubled but Marnie remembers him from her childhood because of his surprising, if misguided, attempts to please her. She wants to ask Jimmie about Andrea but the search for him proves frustrating as she knocks on doors, then terrifying when images and insight from the tea leaves lead to a chilling discovery that illuminates a deep and callous class prejudice and disregard for human life. A tense, compelling work that veers into the metaphysical as Marnie comes to terms with a family gift she isn’t sure she wants also fits solidly into the genres of mystery and contemporary realistic fiction. (Age 13 and older)

Emily Arsenault (The Rose Notes) makes her YA debut with a "page-ripping whodunit" about Marnie Wells, who comes face-to-face with the occult when she discovers her ability to read tea leaves might help solve the mystery of a classmate's disappearance.

Marnie Wells knows that she creeps people out. It's not really her fauThen basketball star Matt Cotrell asks for a reading. He's been getting emails from someone claiming to be his best friend, Andrea Quinley, who disappeared and is presumed dead. And while they'd always denied they were romantically involved, a cloud of suspicion now hangs over Matt. But Marnie sees a kindred spirit: someone who, like her, is damaged by association.

Suddenly, the readings seem real. And, despite the fact that they're telling Marnie things about Matt that make him seem increasingly dangerous, she can't shake her initial attraction to him. In fact, it's getting stronger. And that could turn out to be deadly.