“Assume Nothing” is about a teenage girl’s search for the truth about her mother’s murder.
After Kat McCann’s mother’s death makes headlines, a Sherlock Holmes-esque detective steps in to solve the case. The detective, Alix Lisser, is the muse of a popular crime novelist’s books. Kat, after being featured in one of the books as a victim, found comfort in the novels, obsessing over Lisser and how he solves all of his cases. So when he comes into town for a college lecture, Kat is eager to watch. But this book proves the adage — never meet your heroes.
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“Assume Nothing” depicts a witty and introverted teenage girl trying to outsmart the smartest, the plot unfolding with unexpected and heart-racing turns. Set in 1995, the story is replete with throwbacks like AOL chat rooms, pagers, Orange Juliuses, and a questionable age gap. Trying to navigate high school and confirming her suspicions about the identity of her mother’s killer from all those years ago, we see Kat grapple with her morals and the line between good and bad. But no one in this story, not even the antagonist, is just good or bad, and that is uniquely true for the main character.
Despite Kat McCann being a teenage girl, Joshua Corin, the book’s author, is definitely not a teenage girl. But that’s the point. Corin tries to separate himself from his subjects as much as possible, and he thinks you cannot get more different from him than a teenage girl. In doing this, Corin steps outside his own experiences, researching as much as possible to portray Kat’s character and worldview authentically. Kat’s complexity, a unique feat in this type of book, is made possible by Corin’s approach to writing. Despite the book’s genre being Young Adult, he refuses to write down to his audience.
In a conversation with Corin, he told me that “the worst quality of writing for children is writing down to them. You write up, and they will beat you and often be a page or two ahead of you.” Corin’s opinion is clearly shown throughout the novel, as while the plot may seem simple, it comes with hidden surprises that cannot be anticipated or guessed.
With this puzzling thriller, it can never be overstated that you should assume nothing, a lesson central to the plot and its unexpected twists. And, with that, “Assume Nothing” rejects the conventional tropes of YA and tips them on their head, making the story both enticing and a refreshing departure from the genre’s typical formula.
“Assume Nothing: A Thriller,” by Joshua Corin is available online or at local bookstores.
