Review: Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf

They Wish They Were Us meets The Queen’s Gambit in the world of competitive Scrabble when a teen girl is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend a year after the fact when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages.

CATALYST

13 points

noun: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change

When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet.

But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. 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.

• Title: Queen of the Tiles
• Author: Hannah Alkaf
• Publisher: Salaam Reads / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publication Date: April 19th, 2022
• Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller
• Targeted Age Range: YA
• Content Warnings: Death (on-page), grief and loss, mentions of police, panic attacks, anxiety, absentee parenting, physical violence (shoving), depression, blood, PTSD
• Rating: ★★★★★

When I first heard about Queen of the Tiles, I could not have been more excited! The game of Scrabble is very important to my family — we play Scrabble on practically every major holiday and birthday. I’ve been playing since I was about seven, and there have been many heated debates between my family members on which words can and cannot be played. We take Scrabble very seriously in my household, so the second I found out there was a YA mystery/thriller centered around a Scrabble tournament, I ordered a copy and moved it to the top of my TBR. 

“Scrabble is the one thing in which my brain hasn’t failed me, and each remembered word is a life raft on days when I feel like I’m drowning”

This book captivated me right from the start — I simply did not want to put it down! The storyline was compelling and I loved the pacing of the novel. The stakes were high; not only is Najwa trying to get back into the world of competitive Scrabble by participating in her first tournament in over a year, she’s also doing anything and everything she can to solve her best friend Trina’s murder. 

I love a good locked room mystery, and I really liked the way that Queen of the Tiles uses that trope, but with a twist. Most locked room mysteries (and mysteries in general) take place in the present, but in Queen of the Tiles, the murder happend a year before, and now all the people who were there that weekend are back in the same place the following year. I felt that this added an air of mystery because people’s memories can change in a year (or in Najwa’s case, her memories of that weekend are pretty much gone), making it easier for the culprit to manipulate the past and point the finger elsewhere. 

It’s easy to assume that a book centering around a Scrabble tournament is going to be clever, and while I knew that going in, I don’t think I really could’ve anticipated how clever this book would be. Hanna says that this book is “for the word nerds” and that absolutely rings true. There is so much word play throughout the story that had me grinning from ear to ear every time. I loved the emphasis on the importance of words and their meanings, especially the words that have multiple meanings and how people can use that to their advantage. I think it brought a lot of depth to the story and as the game of Scrabble is all about words, it never felt out of place or unnecessary. Another great touch was that each chapter started with a word, its meaning and its base point value in Scrabble. There were so many words that I’d never even heard of, and if you assume that I am going to work on memorizing them to add to my Scrabble repertoire, then you would be 100% correct!

I have fairly high expectations when it comes to mysteries, and let me tell you, this was a good one. I was so incredibly confident that I had this whole thing figured out around 45% in and I simply was waiting for Najwa to figure it out and for the truth to be revealed. Turns out, I played myself because I could not have been more wrong! Looking back, the reveal makes complete and total sense, but I just didn’t see it. Similarly to Najwa, I found myself looking at the more obvious suspects so the real culprit totally flew under the radar. There was a sense of deception that made it difficult to fully discern what happened the weekend that Trina died, which paired with Najwa’s memory loss, added a lot to the storytelling and keeps you on your toes until the truth is revealed. I did think that the ending would provide a bit more of a bang, but I see why it ended the way that it did and I think it made sense within the overall story. 

I loved Najwa as our main character, I found her completely compelling and really easy to root for. You could clearly see how much Trina’s death affected her (from PTSD, to depressive episodes, and memory loss), and more than anything I wanted her to find the answers that she needed so that she could feel some sense of closure.

“Trina Low wears her gleaming, aggressive prettiness like armor and wields her formidable vocabulary with devastating precision” 

Though the only time we actually meet Trina on page is at the very beginning as we read about the moments just before her death. Based on that scene and the way other characters describe her, I found Trina completely fascinating. The way she was described reminded me so much of Alison DiLaurentis from Pretty Little Liars. She was young, rich and beautiful, seemed to have the perfect life, and was clearly loved (and hated) by many. Everyone felt that they knew her, but did they really? They all seemed to have a different version of Trina, and it was really interesting to hear all these different versions of her that made up Trina the person, as opposed to Trina “Queen of the Tiles” or her online persona. 

The relationship between Trina and Najwa also reminded me of the relationship between Alison and Emily in some ways. Their friendship doesn’t seem as toxic or manipulative as Alison and Emily’s was, but the two did seem like a bit of an unlikely pair. Najwa definitely put Trina on a pedestal and wanted to only see the good in her, whether she really deserved it or not. The difference between them though, is that it seems like Trina really did love and care about Najwa. I found their dynamic — what we had heard of it — was very interesting and I would’ve loved to be able to learn more about their friendship.

All the side characters had clear and distinct personalities — there are no throw away characters in Queen of the Tiles. I really appreciated that none of the characters fit into boxes, and once you thought you had them figured out, something was revealed to surprise you. There were many times where I thought I had a character pegged and then they surprised me. It was also very interesting to hear the subtle differences in everyone’s stories about the weekend of Trina’s death, and how their perceptions of her colored those stories.

This is the first book I’ve read by Hanna Alkaf, and I will absolutely be checking out more of her work!

Links for Queen of the Tiles: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound