Spin

By: Lamar Giles

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Shawana Carter, Sisi Aisha Johnson

Lamar Giles is back with another nonstop, addictive, edge-of-your-seat thriller about best friends, murder, and music.

When rising star Paris Secord (aka DJ ParSec) is found dead on her turntables, it sends the local music scene reeling. No one is feeling that grief more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and ParSec's chief groupie, Fuse - two sworn enemies who happened to be the ones who discovered her body.

The police have few leads, and when the trail quickly turns cold, the authorities don't seem to be pushing too hard to investigate further. Only no one counted on Paris's deeply loyal fans, ParSec Nation, or the outrage that would drive Fuse and Kya to work together. As ParSec Nation takes to social media and the streets in their crusade for justice, Fuse and Kya start digging into Paris's past, stumbling across a deadly secret. With new info comes new motives. New suspects. And a fandom that will stop at nothing in their obsessive quest for answers, not even murder....

©2019 Lamar Giles (P)2019 Scholastic Inc.

A new, more hip mystery

I was nervous in reading this novel because I am not usually one for mystery or murder novels. It is not my preferred type of story, so I did hold off on reading this book for some time. I had it for a couple of months before deciding to pick it up and give it a chance. I simply had more books on my TBR list that caught my attention more. So from the very beginning, I had a distrust in the story and wether it would actually hold my attention until the end or if it would end up on my DNF list. I admit that I enjoy mystery and murder novels every now and then, but the shape this book took had me questioning it from the beginning. I feared that because the story would revolve around a DJ that I would not be too interested. It is not a character I didn't think I would enjoy reading about. However, I will admit that the book held my attention throughout the entire story. 

From the very beginning, the story throws you into the main conflict, as most mystery or crime books do. It is with the progression of the story that more and more details are revealed. As the main narrators learn more of the developing case, so does the reader, creating the ill-using that the reader is walking alongside the narrator and understanding the story alongside the narrators. I appreciated that aspect of the story and was happy that the story was not told from the perspective of a detective or investigator. For some reason, those type of crime and mystery novels do not hold my attention at all. I generally do not like the detective characters and find them too boring to really care about. 

This story follows two protagonists, Fuse and Kya, as the work to get to the bottom of what happened to Paris Secord (DJ ParSec). The story follows the accounts of the two narrators and their dynamic throughout the story was very interesting. The story is setup in a way that held my attention throughout. I was invested in the lives of the characters and found myself wanting to know more about the characters. I was very satisfied with this read and was glad I gave it a chance. 

Audible Review:

The Audible narrations for Spin were enjoyable. Their narration at 1.0 speed was too slow for me and seems like its in slow motion. Their narration 1.25 speed was at what I would consider normal, conversation speed. The favorite listening speed for me was at 1.5 speed. For those of us who like to multitask and listen on the go, I recommend listening at a 1.5 speed, so one does not miss anything. For those who are listening while reading the book and want to listen at a faster pace, I found 2.0 speed to be the best speeds. 2.5 speed was good too, but I liked 2.0 speed better and easier to follow. 3.0 was manageable but too fast for me, and I was missing a lot of what the narrator was saying and had to eventually slow down the narrator's reading speed. However, it is manageable to those who are used to listening to audiobooks at a really fast pace. 3.5 speed was definitely too fast for me.