The Champions (The Cheerleaders #2)

And here's the sequel to Kara Thomas's "The Cheerleaders": "The Champions."

["It was the deaths of five cheerleaders that made the town of Sunnybrook infamous. Eleven years later, the girls' killer has been brought to justice, and the town just wants to move on. By the time Hadley moves to Sunnybrook, though, the locals are more interested in the Tigers, the high school's championship-winning football team. The Tigers are Sunnybrook’s homegrown heroes--something positive in a town with so much darkness in its past.

Hadley could care less about football, but shortly after she gets assigned to cover the team's latest championship bid for the school newspaper, one of the Tigers is poisoned at a party, and almost immediately after, Hadley starts getting strange emails warning her to stay far away from the football team.

It's becoming clear Sunnybrook's golden boys have secrets, and after a second player is mysteriously killed, Hadley’s beginning to suspect that someone wants the team to pay for their sins. Or does this new target on the football team have something to do with what happened to the cheerleaders all those years ago?

As an outsider in Sunnybrook, Hadley feels like she's the only one who can see the present clearly, but it looks like she’s going to have to dig up the darkness of the past to get to the bottom of what’s happening now. Luckily, there are still some Sunnybrook High grads who never left--people who were around eleven years ago—and if she can just convince them to talk, she might be able stop a killer before another Tiger dies."]

I LOOOOOVED how Monica's little brother Petey was in here! All grown up and angsty (and blushy)!! He was the only character that I remember (except for "uncle" Mike, who is not a sergeant) from the first novel (and maybe a teacher or two); I love that we get a little overlap, but at the same time, a whole set of new characters. 

A whole set of new suspects (and murder victims).

There were just SO many people acting sus and being weird and whispering in corners and meeting up with other suspicious people. I'm not really sure how Hadley kept it all straight (I didn't--there were also a lot of the names with the same first initial, which threw me off a few times). 

Another good read by Kara (though I do miss that last-minute, throw-your-book moment).

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