How To Drop Clues For Your Reader Without Giving Everything Away

Today we’re going to talk about Pool Party, by Linda Cargill.

It’s a young adult horror book by Point Horror, who helped originate the genre back in the late 90’s.

Today’s reviews is all about weaving in clues.

And I’m going to tell you up front, it’s got spoilers.

So the main character moves into an old house with her mother with the intention of turning it into a bed and breakfast. There’s a legend about a lost treasure on the property and huge indoor pool which is in the shape of a coffin.

Not coincidentally, all the weird stuff happens around the pool.

However, one of the more interesting things this book does is it describes the strange shape of the pool in detail, but never actually says it’s a coffin shape until almost the end of the book. A clever reader who’s paying attention might be able to figure out from the description, but most are too caught up in the story to notice.

And that’s only the beginning of the clues hidden in this book.

Another clue that is present throughout the story are the sodas. It often shows the main character drinking her favorite soda. A few sentences later, she’d feel tired, slow down considerably, or take a nap.

Of course, when she actually napped, she saw ghosts, a woman dressed in black and crying.

Later you discover that someone was actually drugging her sodas and dressing up as the ghost. She was too groggy from the influence of the drugs to question whether or not it was real. She thought she was either dreaming or actually seeing ghosts. Either way, she was convinced the house was haunted.

The way the drugging scenes were done you didn’t notice right away that she was being drugged, and the character herself certainly didn’t find out until close to the end, but upon rereading it, you did recognize the pattern.

Another clue dotting the book were the flecks of gold that were spotted in the pool’s black tiles that could only be seen from very high up. At first, you think they are part of the pool’s strange old fashioned tiles, but later you learn the gold is the tile’s true color and the black is to hide it.

These are three of the biggest clues in this story, but there are many others. In fact, Pool Party is just full of clues, odd sidelines, and hints that all tie together into one big story, so be sure to check it out.