Summer Rental

Ross (Ski Weekend) cleverly toys with serial killer tropes in this tense locked-room thriller set during a Florida hurricane. After Riley March’s father was arrested for embezzlement, she was forced to transfer high schools for her senior year and managed to get in with the ultrapopular “10-Squad” at Bishop Prep. Now, Riley and the squad have just graduated, and she’s been invited to the group’s final weekend getaway in the Florida Keys. Initially, the teens dismiss reports that Hurricane Helena is expected to slam the region, but when the storm ramps up, they’re trapped inside their rental house, with little to do but taunt one another about the mass killing that took place there 20 years earlier. A few hours into the storm, a member of the squad goes missing, and then others start turning up dead. Is the mass murderer back for seconds? Or might someone be seeking revenge against the 10-Squad for a classmate’s suicide a year earlier? Ross enlivens her familiar premise with quippy, Scream-style metacommentary (“Police are usually the first to bite it in horror movies,” one teen warns an officer who arrives at the house) and brings the proceedings to a rewarding conclusion. This is good fun. (Self-published)