“Five students go to detention. Only four leave alive.
Yale hopeful Bronwyn has never publicly broken a rule.
Sports star Cooper only knows what he’s doing in the baseball diamond.
Bad body Nate is one misstep away from a life of crime.
Prom queen Addy is holding together the cracks in her perfect life.
And outsider Simon, creator of the notorious gossip app at Bayview High, won’t ever talk about any of them again.
He dies 24 hours before he could post their deepest secrets online. Investigators conclude it’s no accident. All of them are suspects.
Everyone has secrets, right?
What really matters is how far you’ll go to protect them.”
The outside of the pages are RED! (… well they are on my copy).
But, you’re probably here because you’re wondering about the content of the book and not the cosmetics of it, right?
Well, let me tell you that this book starts with a bang! First chapter in and the excitement begins. Fast paced and immediately gets into the thick of the plot. I sensed good things from the start.
We follow five characters in the beginning. Bronwyn, Cooper, Nate, Addy and Simon.
Yes, I concede that there are things which happen in this story that you see coming a mile off, especially at the beginning. But that does not hold true for the rest of the book! There are things that pop up which were completely unexpected in a brilliant way.
There were characters which surprised me, mainly Addy. In the beginning I thought for sure she’d be a character I’d loathe. Her first main line was “What do we write with? There are no computers”. This had me on the verge of tearing my hair out! But when you meet her mother you quickly deduce why Addy comes off the way she does, what with life advice such as “If you say no too many times then someone else will say yes” – and the mother of the year award goes too…. not you.
One line I loved was when a character named Vanessa couldn’t keep her paws to herself, we hear the gem that is: “If Vanessa were a guy, somebody would’ve reported her for all the inappropriate touching she does” – TRUTH!
I love the relationships formed in this book. Both romantic relationships and friendships, plus the family units are not only present but well represented, no two family are the same which is brilliant because we get to see different aspects of these characters lives and why they may have grown up the way they have, plus having these different parental units is very representative of real life in a way.
I also immensely enjoyed one characters speech on how she’s OK being single. Usually in a lot of books it’s all about relationships and how they’re sad being alone or they need a guy/girl in order to make them happy. Sometimes you get a little sick of that because, as we all know, that’s not necessarily true. As human beings we are capable of being happy without with or without a partner. This development from a character, initially terrified at the prospect of no partner, was great to see.
At some point I started to get suspicious as to who it was that could have committed the crime. This was a slow build up with fast paced action that when it was all revealed I was excited to be proven correct and it still had a last twist thrown in to blow your mind at the conclusion.
It’s safe to say that while my emotions ran high during this story, I was totally engrossed and think I finished it within one day. It kept me on edge and intrigued the entire time and all in all, I adored this book!
