Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series meets the cult classic film Fargo in this gripping, dark comedy by debut author Kathleen Hale.
A quiet town like Friendship, Wisconsin, keeps most of its secrets buried . . . but when local teen Ruth Fried is found murdered in a cornfield, her best friend, Kippy Bushman, decides she must uncover the truth and catch the killer. Since the police aren't much help, Kippy looks to her newly discovered idol, journalist Diane Sawyer, for tips on how to conduct her investigation. But Kippy soon discovers, if you want to dig up the truth, your hands have to get a little dirty, don'tcha know.
In this riveting young adult novel, Kathleen Hale creates a quirky murder mystery that is intricately plotted and sure to keep readers guessing, laughing, and cringing until the surprising final pages. "Can a murder mystery be funny? You betcha!" raved Kirkus Reviews in a starred review.
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105 of 114 people found the following review helpful.
No One Else Can Have You
By Leeanna Chetsko
NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE YOU is a tricky book to review. I think it’s a book you either love or hate. It’s dark, it’s quirky, and it’s definitely unique. I recommend checking out an excerpt if you’re thinking of reading it to see if the style is for you.Personally, I didn’t enjoy NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE YOU. The events within are just so over the top I expected the characters to break out into song and dance as if they were on Broadway instead of in a book. I felt like the author was trying too hard to make the book dark and edgy.Kippy’s best friend, Ruth, is found brutally murdered at the start of the book. While the small town sheriff is convinced Ruth’s boyfriend is the one who did it, Kippy’s not so sure. Trying to emulate her hero Diane Sawyer, Kippy bumbles through an investigation, held back by the sheriff, her father, her only other friend — basically the whole town. Friendship, Wisconsin is a small town, and I did think the author nailed that small town mentality, where everyone knows everyone’s business, but there are a few secrets lurking beneath the politeness.There are excerpts from Ruth’s diary throughout the book, which reveal that she might not have been the person Kippy always thought she was. Those were probably the best part of the book for me, because Ruth was so unfiltered and honest. When I read “Ruth here. Kippy is so pathetic it makes me nauseous (p. 18),” I was like, “yeah, this is going to be a good book.”Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last long. As I said above, the book just felt forced to me. Yeah, Kippy’s an oddball, but it’s like she’s *too* much of one. Her father, Dom, is over-protective, but he’s *too* over-protective, and there was something he did near the end to Kippy that made me sick. Then there was a scene where Kippy and Davey, Ruth’s brother, infiltrate a therapy group and pretend that Davey hits her. Making fun of domestic abuse is not okay.NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE YOU just wasn’t the book for me.
95 of 104 people found the following review helpful.Was this written by a teenager?
By Silea
Based on the blurb, i expected this to be a sort of campy, teen-version of Fargo. Brutal murder, tiny midwest/plains town, inept cops, etc., all slathered with a layer of dark humor.What i got was an alternate universe in which adults are such complete morons that it's amazing they haven't all starved to death because they can't figure out how to get a forkful of food from their plate to their mouth. I get, in a YA novel, making the teenagers the protagonists and playing them against the adults, but not a single adult in this book seemed to have the reasoning skills of a preschooler. For example, the Sheriff has decided whom he wants to be guilty of the crime, and ignores all evidence to the contrary. Then he proceeds to ignore evidence that he could quite easily use to support his theory as well, just to show that adults don't listen to teens.And i got the feeling, while i was reading, that the author didn't decide until 3/4 of the way through who was actually guilty of the crime. Various people are set up as having motive, opportunity, or both, but it's all so half-hearted until suddenly it's obviously this one person and not the other suspects.In all, there was very little worthwhile in this book. While i can imagine teens enjoying a book that presents all adults as self-absorbed incompetents, i wouldn't even recommend it to such a reader because there's nothing else good about it.
75 of 84 people found the following review helpful.Don't waste your time or money
By Cheryl Koch
My first word when I think of this book is ...seriously?! I picked up a copy because a fellow reader friend of mine loved the book. We share very similar tastes in books and we are usually on the same page when it comes to rating them as well. So I took a chance and picked up a copy of this book. The chance did not pay off. I am amazed that I got to page 108 before I put this book down. I was hoping against hope that this book would get better.It started out good but then it quickly went down hill. I am surprised with the language and all of Ruth's diary entries about her sexual experiences that this book is classified as a young adult book. Ruth was not a very nice friend to Kippy. Thus as Kippy found out from Ruth's diary. It was a wonder that Kippy actually wanted to help solve Ruth's murder. Because I sure did not care about the motive behind Ruth's murder. Thus this was part of the reason that I put this book down and did not care to continue reading it.
