by Angeline Boulley
4.8 · 4 reviewsAn eighteen-year-old caught between two worlds goes undercover to stop a deadly drug from tearing her community apart.
Daunis Fontaine has always lived with one foot in each world: the affluent town side of her late mother's family, and the Ojibwe community of her father's tribe, where she has never quite been granted full belonging. With college plans already reshaped by grief and family obligation, she's stayed home in her Michigan border town, content to keep her head down and look after the people she loves.
Then she witnesses a shocking death, and her carefully balanced life cracks open. Drawn into a federal investigation into a dangerous new drug spreading through her community, Daunis becomes the one person with the cultural knowledge and chemistry expertise to help from the inside. Going undercover means lying to the people she trusts most, including a charming new hockey player whose role is more complicated than it seems.
As the bodies and betrayals mount, Daunis must decide how far she'll go to protect her own — and what it really means to be a keeper of her community's fire. Blending a propulsive mystery with a heartfelt coming-of-age story, this is a novel about identity, justice, and finding the courage to stand in your own truth.
First published in 2021.
4 reviews
Smart, brave, flawed, and so easy to root for. This book made me cry on the bus more than once. The undercover plot is tense but it's the questions about identity and belonging that I keep thinking about weeks later.
Once it gets going it's gripping, and I loved how much it taught me without ever talking down to the reader. My only gripe is the first few chapters take their time setting up the world, so it took me a while to fully lock in. Worth pushing through.
A thriller with real heart. The mystery kept me guessing, but what stayed with me was the community Boulley built — the aunties, the elders, the grief and the humor all tangled together. I've already recommended it to half my book club.
I went in expecting a slow YA mystery and got something so much richer. Daunis is one of the most fully realized narrators I've read in ages, and the way her Ojibwe culture is woven into every page never feels like a lesson — it just feels true. The last hundred pages wrecked me.