PW #373: Young Adult Contemporary Mystery: IN WITH THE VIOLETS

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Names: Heather Ezell & Rachel Griffin

Mentee Name: Sarah White

Title: IN WITH THE VIOLETS

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary Mystery

Word Count: 77,000 words

Pitch:

When 17-year-old Viola escapes her kidnappers, there’s no happy family reunion. She’s suffering amnesia and doesn’t recognise her parents, brother, or their grand Scottish estate. As pieces of her memory fall into place, they don’t align with the life she now knows, and Viola must solve her own disappearance before her attackers’ next strike.

Excerpt:

The girl could be dead.

There’s not a hint of movement. Her pallor is dull.

This wasn’t planned. It’s all wrong.

She wasn’t supposed to die. At least not yet.

But for all intents and purposes, the girl lying here on the ground shows no sign of life.

Chapter 1

A hand on my shoulder, fingers brushing against my face. When I come to, a hand holds mine.

I’m frozen in place, my muscles tense. I don’t know if the hand is meant to be there. My heart rate picks up, adrenaline courses through me. I want to run, I want to scream, but all I can focus on are cold fingers resting against mine.

Question upon question, half formed, race through my mind. Where, how… and who? I stare at the ceiling, clinical white plasterboard tiles, refusing to face the unknown person beside me until I can work out what I’m feeling.

Then the realisation hits me with a heart stopping crash.

I don’t know who I am.

“How are you feeling, dear?”

“I don’t know,” I say, in the same tone one might use when a freight train is barrelling towards them.

I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.

It feels as though my head has burst open. I reach up to touch it, it stings, and my hand comes away sticky with blood.

And just like that I’m gone again.