A relaxing two weeks in a Spanish villa was all Ryan and his friends wanted. A chance to catch up after a year apart and put their friend Janey's death to rest. What they got was a rude interruption and another murder.

James Dawson's Cruel Summer is the perfect balance of murder mystery, teen fiction and horror movie.

Murder mysteries, psychological thrillers and the like don't generally appeal to me, but this is different. It manages to be funny, heartwarming and – murder aside – ­easy for teenage audiences to relate to.

I thought structuring the book by having the chapters being called scenes ­of a continuation of Ryan's imaginary TV programme about his life ­was really effective as it facilitates change in viewpoints and various flashbacks in such a way that didn't seem forced or clunky.

Character-wise, Cruel Summer is superb. Most of the book alternates between Ryan and Alisha's viewpoints. All the main characters are interesting, well developed and trustworthy, which is important in a book where one of the characters is a murderer.

In that vein the book succeeded again. I had multiple ideas of who the killer might be and why but I'm pleased to say none of them were right. That's the sign of a really good book. I did feel the reasoning was a little drastic but could be believable to a degree.

My only major criticism of Cruel Summer is that while Ryan and Greg's storyline is definitely important to the book, I felt it was introduced too late. By the time it was actually addressed, I was focused on the other plot points and so it didn't have impact in the way it might have if brought in earlier.

Overall, Cruel Summer is brilliant and I highly recommend it for teenagers looking for something a little different in their summer read.

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