Dial Em For Murder by Marni Bates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dial Em for Murder was a great, action-packed YA thriller with a really good play on book names. I received an early release copy through Edwelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Emmy is a 16 year old high school student who is obsessed with becoming a romance book author. She daydreams about characters she creates and rewrites real life situations in how she can envision them in a romance novel. She has two best friends, Audrey and Ben, with whom she shares everything with, even her unstable home life. She lives with her mom and her string of live-in boyfriends that come and go quite often, to the point where sometimes she is more the adult than her mom.

Em is busy working on her most recent romance novel at a Starbucks and steps away from the borrowed machine where she is working to order a drink. Unfortunately, she witnesses a man walk off with her drink and being the gutsy girl she is marches over to ask for her drink back. This begins the start of Emmy's troubles. The man did not accidentally take the wrong drink. He is trying to get her attention to warn her about what is about to happen to her life. This leads to a crazy chain of events where Emmy is thrown into several life and death situations. To remain safe she begins attending a secure private academy a few hours from home where things do not go quite like she planned. But, she is one step closer to one of her goals in life, finding her father. Now I have to wonder one thing. How long do I have to wait for the next installment in this series?