Queen of the Tiles - Hanna Alkaf

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend's death, it's with the intention to heal. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It's macabre, but Najwa finds meaning in the gesture, because she's not ready to give up Trina just yet.

But the same can't be said for all the other competitors. With former Scrabble Queen Trina gone, her friends are eager to take the throne. All's fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina's formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina's death wasn't as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it.

As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it's up to Najwa to find out who's behind these mysterious posts - not just to save Trina's memory, but to save herself."

 Mystery, love triangles, word nerdery...this book has everything. I was excited to read this after I loved The Weight of Our Sky so much, and Hanna Alkaf knocked it out of the park again. Clues unraveled at just the right pace to make the book impossible to put down, and I loved the way that Najwa's assumptions about each character influenced - and sometimes hindered - her investigation. And there were so many perfectly-placed red herrings that I kept thinking I had it figured out only to have the rug pulled out from under me.

I don't want to get into details about the book because I don't want to accidentally spoil anything, but this is probably the most excited book set at a Scrabble tournament that you will ever read. Also, she would destroy me, but I would love to play Scrabble with Najwa and talk about the definitions of each word. I'm firmly on her side as far as word meaning - I don't understand how anyone could memorize a bunch of words for Scrabble and not want to know what they mean.