Cover of Deadly Cool

Book Highlights

Deadly Cool

by Gemma Halliday

What it's about

Hartley Featherston is a high school student who turns amateur detective after discovering her boyfriend is cheating on her. She navigates the absurdities of teenage social hierarchies and parental expectations while uncovering the truth behind a local mystery.

Key ideas

  • The betrayal trifecta: Discovering a boyfriend's infidelity through locker room evidence triggers a quest for revenge and truth.
  • Parental disconnect: Mothers often view high school life through a distorted lens, assuming all teens exist in a harmonious, rule-abiding society.
  • Satirical social commentary: High school cliques, like the Color Guard or the Chastity Club, are treated with a humorous, observant eye.
  • Candid communication: Characters use sharp, sarcastic wit to process trauma and handle tense confrontations with peers.

You'll love this book if...

  • You enjoy fast-paced young adult mysteries mixed with heavy doses of sarcasm and humor.
  • You're looking for a lighthearted, witty protagonist who handles teenage heartbreak with creative vengeance.

Best for

Readers who enjoy humorous teen detectives in the vein of Veronica Mars.

Books with the same vibe

  • The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
  • Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
  • I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter

19 popular highlights from this book

Key Insights & Memorable Quotes

The most popular highlights from Deadly Cool, saved by readers on Screvi.

“Earthquakes just happen. Tornadoes just happen. Your tongue does not just happen to fall into some other girls mouth!”
“I'll go," he said."And that's safer because?""I'm a guy.""Right, and having a pair of dingle balls makes you invincible how?”
“That craptastical, gutless, son-of-a-cactus-humping butt monkey!!”
“I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I lied, I like your Star Wars sheets, you're not that bad of a driver, and I swear on my Very Cherry lip gloss that I will never lie to you again.”
“Caw! Caw, Hartley, caw!"Chase narrowed his eyes again."Sam?"I nodded. Then crossed to the window again and called down to Sam. "You can quit squawking. He caught me.”
“In the immortal words of Mr. Burns.......eeeeexcellent.”
“She shot me a sugar-coated smile. I matched it calorie for calorie.”
“I didn't point out that Courtney and I were hardly BFFs. In Mom's world everyone under the age of eighteen was friends with everyone else, like we were all part of some secret society of minors.”
“We actually wanted to ask you a few questions. About the interview you did this morning."At the mention of her KTVU debut, Caitlyn softened a little. "You saw that?"I nodded."How did I look on camera?"Her grief was touching.”
“There are three things you never want to find in your boyfriend's locker: a sweaty jockstrap, a D minus on last week's history test, and an empty condom wrapper.Lucky me, I'd hit the trifecta.”
“No matter how much I may love—scratch that, loved, past tense—Josh, I was no dummy. Everyone knows the Y chromosome carries with it the instinctive urge to lie under pressure.Which, incidentally, was what Josh was going to be under when I found him. Serious pressure.On his larynx.”
“Our bodies are our temples. They should have a little more respect for themselves than that.”“You know, I could have sworn I saw you shoveling Cheetos into your temple last week.”“Oh, but I’m pretty sure those were nonfat,” Kaylee piped up.Oh brother.”
“Holy effing crap, that sucks!"I turned to her. "Effing?"Sam shrugged. "What?""We're censoring now?""Kyle says I have a mouth like a trucker.”
“Wow, you know a lot of swear words," Sam commented at one point. "And here I thought I had a dirty mouth.""What can I say? Apparently candid porn starring my boyfriend brings out the best in me.”
“That craptastical, gutless, son-of-a-cactus humping butt monkey" - Hartley Featherston”
“Which leads me to ask...what exactly are you going to do when we get there?"I thought about it. "Rip Josh's nuggets off and feed them to his hamster?”
“Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face.”
“Do you know how much a freaking baby costs? A million dollars.”
“While it wasn't a total given that all members of the Color Guard also belonged to the Chastity Club, twirling flags was considered one of the most wholesome activities on campus, meaning the ratio of Chastity girls in Color Guard was something like that of Mormons in Utah.”

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