BIANCA TORRE IS AFRAID OF EVERYTHING By Justine Pucella Winans

I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Bianca Torre Is Afraid of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans
Published by Clarion Books on 4/11/23
Genres: Contemporary, LGBT, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Young Adult
Pages: 375
Format: Ebook
Source: Reviewer Purchase
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Sixteen-year-old Bianca Torre is an avid birder undergoing a gender identity crisis and grappling with an ever-growing list of fears. Some, like Fear #6: Initiating Conversation, keep them constrained, forcing them to watch birds from the telescope in their bedroom. And, occasionally, their neighbors. When their gaze wanders to one particular window across the street, Bianca witnesses a creepy plague-masked murderer take their neighbor’s life. Worse, the death is ruled a suicide, forcing Bianca to make a choice—succumb to their long list of fears (including #3 Murder and #55 Breaking into a Dead Guy’s Apartment), or investigate what happened.

Bianca enlists the help of their friend Anderson Coleman, but the two have more knowledge of anime than true crime. As Bianca and Anderson dig deeper into the murder with a little help from Bianca’s crush and fellow birding aficionado, Elaine Yee (#13 Beautiful People, #11 Parents Discovering They’re a Raging Lesbian), the trio uncover a conspiracy much larger—and weirder—than imagined. And when the killer catches wind of the investigation, suddenly Bianca’s #1 fear of public sp

Short and Sweet Review

Bianca is a bird watcher and a people watcher. Her habit of people watching ends up in her seeing a neighbors murder. Bianca teams up with her neighbor and currently only friend to try to solve the murder, along the way they also team up with Bianca’s crush, Elaine, who is in the bird watching group Bianca meets up with every week. Bianca and her team of mystery solvers need to figure out who the murderer is because they’re in jeopardy of being next on the hit list.

First of all, this book was amazing! Everything about Bianca was endearing, she’s trying to figure out her gender identity, she has a list of fears, not a lot of friends, and has a hobby of bird and people watching. Bianca has one friend and that’s Anderson, and they both connected over their love of anime and honestly he’s a great friend, he’s ride or die and so supportive of Bianca. One night while people watching, Bianca sees one of her neighbors get murdered and her and Anderson decide to investigate because they know it’s not a suicide like the police are claiming. Unfortunately, this puts both of them in harms way as they become the target of whoever this murderer is. Bianca and Anderson have families that are very supportive and maybe not all for them investigating but they understand what the two are tying to do. Bianca and Anderson learn that the neighbor that was murdered (Mr. Conspiracy) left a clue for them and it has to do with a secret group and birds, so now Bianca is seeing clues everywhere, which is where Elaine comes in to the mix. Bianca and Elaine’s relationship is cute, they both like each other from afar but Bianca who kinda is afraid of everything is afraid of initiating conversation so their interactions are really cute. So now the group that’s investigating is a trio and they learn that this secret group is really coming for them and that they have to solve the clues before they end up like Mr. Conspiracy.

Overall, this book was amazing. I don’t do this often, but this is a book I would reread. The characters are amazing, Bianca especially, I loved seeing her character develop over the course of the book. The side characters are also great and add a lot to the book. The mystery was well written and I loved how different it was, its not everyday you have a main character who’s afraid of everything get pulled into a murder mystery. I definitely recommend this book, its funny, heart-warming, and hard to put down!