Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Killer's Cousin
	Author:	Werlin, Nancy
	Date Published:	1998
	Genre:	Mystery
	Grade Level:	7 - 10
	Booktalker:	Bonnie Phinney

Booktalk:
Seventeen-year-old David Yaffe has recently been acquitted of murder. His parents have sent him to Cambridge to finish high school. Reluctantly, it turns out, his aunt and uncle have offered him shelter – and an escape from the media’s incessant questions and all the glances of his neighbors. But he knows that everyone, even in Massachusetts, knows about the trial. It was well publicized. He thinks, at first, that the attic apartment he’s been given will give him private space and shelter from the outside world. What it gives him instead are ghostly shadows, odd humming sounds at night, haunting nightmares, and a great sense of unease. His aunt is cold and unwelcoming and his eleven-year-old cousin, Lily, is downright hostile. As Lily’s behavior becomes more and more threatening, David can’t help wondering why. What ugly secrets lurk within the walls of Lily’s home? Does it have something to do with Lily’s sister’s suicide a few years earlier? Or does Lily just resent his being there, interfering in her relationship with her family? There’s one thing David knows with certainty. The longer he stays in the house, and the more he learns about his cousin, the harder it is to avoid thinking about his own past. David is gripped by guilt and fear in a psychological thriller that’s hard to put down.