LitPick Review
Leo Cantrell discovers that his previous adventure (told in the first volume I Know When You Are Going to Die) is going to turn into a movie produced by his ambitious, pushy mother. Leo and his friends JC, Chet, and Laura get to experience the making of a film and befriend the actors who will play them. Leo, however, receives psychic visions of gruesome attacks on set, suggesting that a killer is on the loose and has their eyes set on the cast and crew. While this is going on, Leo has to weigh his sexuality and feelings for Asher, the actor/model playing him.
Opinion:
Normally reading a later volume without reading a previous one can be a confusing chore because readers get lost. But this volume benefits from reading out of order because all is explained through the movie-within-a-book.
Using the device of a film made out of the previous book, readers are given information about characters’s back stories, important plot points, and the occasional spoiler without having read the first book. It's a very unique way of catching up late coming readers while also telling a great story in its own right.
Film buffs will enjoy the behind the scenes look on how a film adaptation is made, what gets added, what is eliminated, and the bemused reaction of the real film subjects watching their acting doppelgangers playing them. It's a great setting to envelope a suspenseful thriller involving disguises, mistaken identity, and people pretending to be someone that they are not.
The characters are compelling, particularly Leo. His psychic gift of seeing how people die is explored through nightmarish visions that make the normally shy teen even more withdrawn. The chapters where he talks to his loyal friends, his sometimes overbearing mother, and his potential love interest are clear and understandable.
They Know When The Killer Will Strike is a gripping thriller with a fun satirical edge as it looks at murder on the set of a Hollywood film.
