Mystery Book Review: Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf

Mystery Book Review: Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf: https://t.co/O9vTsxcewM

Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 15, 2022

Short Review (cont): A year after Najwa's best friend Trina fell dead at a scrabble tourney, Najwa hopes to move on past her grief at another tourney....but soon finds herself triggered by posts from Trina's social media implying someone killed her. Very Enjoyable YA mystery
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 15, 2022

 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 19, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Queen of the Tiles is a young adult mystery novel by Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf.  The story, featuring a Muslim teenage scrabble loving girl, takes place at a teen scrabble tournament in Malaysia as the protagonist, Najwa, tries to deal with the 1 year anniversary of the death of her best friend at a different scrabble tournament.  The story is very young adult, but also very classical mystery in how it sets up a number of mysterious events, a number of well built out characters to act as suspects, and incorporates the theme of Scrabble throughout - something that really appealed to me as a very casual scrabble player.  

And I liked Queen of the Tiles a good bit, as it dealt with a protagonist dealing with trauma and grief due to her best friend's death, who wanted to move forward with the game she once loved but struggles due to how its intertwined with her trauma....something not helped by other individuals acting in ways to bring back the memories.  And the mystery elements (in addition to the themes of friendship, of love, of relationships and just how different people react to things) work pretty well, as the book manages to make every character believable in their motives and actions and personalities, which I really liked.  The book's biggest weakness is its conclusion, which is horribly horribly cliched, but other than that, if you're looking for YA Mystery, you will find a lot to like with Queen of the Tiles.  

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
A year ago, Trina "Queen of the Tiles" Low was all set to win yet another youth Scrabble competition in Malaysia....when, at the end of a match, she suddenly fell over dead.  

Since that time, her best friend, Najwa Bakri, has found it hard to move forward with her life.  Whereas once she was a top Scrabble player herself - thriving on victories even after Trina caught up and surpassed her - she has barely touched a Scrabble board since, nevertheless competed.  It didn't help that some on social media accused her of somehow being involved in Trina's death.  

But now, a year later, she's determined to go back to competition, even the same competition that once ended Trina's life.  Seeing all her friends and competitors striving to be the new queen of the tiles, Najwa resolves to win the competition and the title herself.  

But then Trina's instagram account starts posting cryptic messages, which seem to suggest something untoward happened with her death, and begins to DM Najwa herself...and Najwa finds herself distracted by the mystery: who is behind these posts and why?  And is it possible that the posts' implication is real, that Trina was murdered, and if so....who was responsible?  
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Queen of the Tiles is a story that works on two levels: on one hand, it's a solid mystery novel that offers up a number of possible suspects, each with their own realistic motivations that may leave you guessing until the end (my own personal first guess as to who it was turned out to be right, but I had second doubts 2/3 of the way through, which is what you hope for in a mystery).  On the other hand, this is a story about a teenage girl in Najwa, and to a lesser extent the people around her, who is trying to figure out how to move forward after tragedy, and having to also recontextualize things that she thought she knew to be true about relationships (platonic ones mainly).  And both of these pretty much work together really well.  

This is helped by an excellent case - you have Najwa, the girl who is heartbroken/grief-stricken still a year later by her best friend's loss, and has needed therapy to try to move forward and is thus both determined to win and terrified of doing so this scrabble tournament in some ways, and who can be knocked off kilter by small revelations about Trina and her death.  Najwa is our heroine, and its so incredibly easy to feel for her as she struggles through it all, and revelations make her question all that she knew about her relationship with her best friend - was it healthy?  was it really mutual love?  and even if it was, was she blinded by it to things happening to others?  

Then you have a cast of others who all make sense and feel like real people and real possible suspects, who also have their own arcs. You have Mark, the former boyfriend of Trina and the protagonist's former crush, who might have been having fights with Trina but believes her death was not an accident; you have Puteri, Mark's ex from before Trina who was jealous of her; you have Emily, the girl who was caught cheating by Trina and now is hounded by that accusation; you have Yasmin, the girl who loved Trina so much in a one sided groupie-esque way that she always hung on her every move, and is bright and cheerful; you have Josh, the hyper-competitive scrabble player who seems to be an utter jerk emotionally....etc.  There's a lot of reveals regarding them, as well as others I haven't mentioned, and everyone feels like the cast you'd expect around the teenage Scrabble tournament scene.  And it leads to a bunch of emotional, character, and mystery development that really works.  

Really the only thing that doesn't quite work in Queen of the Tiles is the ending - this is not a book that ends with a grand solve of the mystery by the protagonist, but instead has the antagonist decide to reveal themselves at the end....leading the protagonist to figure out what to do about that.  And that could be fine (after all our protagonist is hardly Sherlock Holmes), except that the resolution requires one of the most cliche things of all time that I can't imagine the antagonist didn't realize.  Like seriously? 

But other than that, I really liked Queen of the Tiles, which I must also mention really does well by its Malaysian setting with the way the characters talk (and use certain words) and come from different backgrounds.  It's a very excellent YA Mystery, and its use of Scrabble is really enjoyable to me, as a casual Scrabble fan.  Recommended.