This HaBO comes from Dee, who is trying to find this young adult book:
I know it is not actually a romance, but more a YA mystery with some romantic elements. I read it as a kid (probably between age 10-14) and it still stuck with me. Of course, it seems like only I remember this book, but i did love it. Here are the details:
For the life of me I cannot remember the title of the book or the author. It was from the mid 80’s to early 90’s and was a YA mystery with teenage characters. There was a girl sent to spend the summer with her aunt and a selfish cousin, who was known as a beauty. I believe it might have been a first person narrator. In the book, a few years pass after the cousin’s death and there is a reunion. All of these odd things start happening, including something with a possibly sabotaged jet ski and the heroine was made to feel like she could trust no one. The setting was on a lake and had a French name like Fond du Lac or Chance du Lac. It might have taken place in either Wisconsin or Michigan and was on the Canadian border. I vaguely remember the book having a lavender cover and the picture was of a lake at night and either a jet ski or canoe on the shore.
I feel like I’ve read this one. I want to say it’s a Sarah Dessen, but the timeline doesn’t match up.
I could be way off base, but based on the late 80s-early 90s timing this sounds like a Christopher Pike book. He wrote a lot of YA murder mystery/thrillers featuring teenagers. The covers were usually dark, though.
I’d suggest it’s probably a Carolina B. Cooney book, I loved her suspense books when I was a kid/teen, and it sounds like one of her covers too.
Mid-80s/early-90s makes me think Christopher Pike, RL Stine, or even Betty Ren Wright, Joan Lowery Nixon, or Mary Downing Hahn. Could it have been a Scholastic or Camelot book? Scholastic and Camelot might be younger than what you’re thinking but I remember a lot of them having lavender or purple covers.
omg, I swear I’ve read this book! It sounds so familiar but I can’t place it in my memory! I really hope someone else remembers it because this is going to bug me now!
It does sounds a little like Cooney’s book Fatality. A death happens at a friends summer house then a few years later, the police reopen the case I think because they find a diary or letters?
Okay this might be a long shot, because it might not fit the publishing timeline, but I know there’s a lavender colored YA, probably suspense book at my mom’s house. It looks like Cooney’s “Hush Little Baby” but lighter colored (and while I have that one, I don’t think that’s what I’m remembering) and I feel like it might have a lake on the cover. My mom can’t look for it until later in the week, but I’ll definitely ask!
I was thinking of the Windswept series that ran during that time period — YA + mystery/gothics. But none of the covers are quite right.
I will add there appears to be a Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, so maybe that was the setting?
@catswithbats
I think it could have been a Scholastic book. I also remember like a small boat or jetski on the lake shore on the cover.
I have looked up those authors you’ve commented, but no luck.
Thank you, anyway!