THE CHAMPIONS

A teen who aspires to be a cutting-edge journalist becomes enmeshed in the cover-ups surrounding her upstate New York town’s football team.

Hadley’s major focus for her senior year at Sunnybrook High School is being made editor in chief of the school newspaper, a post that she feels will give her an edge in her application to study journalism at Columbia. Her rival for the position is Peter—and she’s still sore about their personal history. A cute member of Sunnybrook’s celebrated football team convinces Hadley to go to a party, but after he ends the night unconscious and in the emergency room, she and Peter find themselves diving in deeper than either might want to. Together, they explore bleak secrets and scandals involving the team, including academic cheating, dating violence, and sexual assault. Set in the same community as The Cheerleaders (2018) and featuring some returning characters (here appearing mostly in secondary roles), this stand-alone companion novel constructs a similarly intricate mystery that takes its time unwinding. Readers will easily empathize with Hadley as she doggedly pursues the truth, even when doing so creates difficulties for her and causes her to be bullied by her classmates. Hadley and Peter read white; there’s racial diversity among the secondary characters.

An engrossing, thrilling, and at times grim mystery with a likable protagonist.