I’ve read and reviewed all five of Emily Arsenault’s previous novels written for adults. The Leaf Reader is Arsenault’s first novel for young adults. It’s the kind of mystery that quietly sucks you in and develops into a page turner. It’s pretty much an old fashioned, whodunit type mystery requiring some good, old fashioned, psychic assisted sleuthing. Considering the main character is a tea leaf reader and the main action of the novel takes place over the month of October, I’m going to say that it fits with our theme of the last couple weeks of creepy titles to watch or read in the dark.
Marnie exists on the outskirts of Colesbury High School life. A nerd who has made peace with not being popular or having lots of friends, Marnie counts the days until she graduates and can blow out of town and leave Colesbury far behind. As a pastime she reads tea leaves for various high school peers including the dramatic, popular Cecelia who has talked up Marnie’s tea leaf fortune telling skills to Matt, a popular basketball player at their school. Matt seeks out Marnie’s skills because months earlier his bff Andrea disappeared without a trace, and now he’s receiving emails from an anonymous account purportedly from Andrea. But the emails are too short and just vague enough that they could be from anyone, and the emailer has hidden his online trail so thoroughly that police are unable to trace the account’s origins, subsequently writing off the initial email as a hoax.
When Matt confides in Marnie about Andrea’s strange behavior in the months leading up to her disappearance, insists on tracking down Andrea’s drug dealer, Jimmy, who has also disappeared, and discloses subsequent anonymous, sketchy emails, Marnie is reluctantly drawn into Matt’s unofficial investigation. Matt believes Jimmy holds the key to Andrea’s disappearance, and while Matt isn’t wrong, Jimmy’s true connection to Andrea’s disappearance will shock their whole town. Then Marnie starts receiving anonymous emails similar to those being sent to Matt, only these missives warn Marnie against trusting Matt–and so does Cecelia who insists that Matt’s feelings for Andrea were more than platonic despite both Matt’s and Andrea’s insistence that their friendship was always only ever platonic.
After the discovery of Jimmy’s skeletal remains in an abandoned amusement park in the next town, Marnie is determined to find justice for the drug dealer the whole town forgot after his disappearance and then used as a means to an ends to find golden girl, Andrea. As Marnie uses her tea leaf reading gift to piece together what happened to Jimmy, she finds out that psychic ability runs in the family though it manifests itself in different ways in different family members. Then an unlikely turn of events in the resolution of Andrea’s disappearance spurs Marnie to ensure that the truth comes out once and for all regarding Jimmy’s fate.
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