A can’t-put-down read.
A dangerous texting game comes to Bayview High in this sequel to One of Us Is Lying (2017).
Last year in a San Diego suburb, a gossip app led to a death and inspired weak copycats. Now an anonymous person is sending Truth or Dare messages to the students of Bayview High, and this time no one is safe. If you choose truth (or don’t respond), one of your secrets is revealed. Complete a dare and you’ve passed. The game mostly causes an entertaining stir—until a student winds up dead. Was it an accident, or was it murder? High school juniors Maeve, Phoebe, and Knox find themselves caught up in the mystery of who’s behind the texts. The Bayview Four make appearances, but the compelling heart of the story is the three main characters’ family drama and personal struggles. Maeve thinks she’s having a leukemia relapse, Phoebe slept with her sister’s boyfriend, and Knox interns at a legal aid firm whose staff members are receiving death threats. Shifting perspectives keep the pace steady while McManus (Two Can Keep a Secret, 2019, etc.) deftly weaves in commentary on the justice system, bullying, and slut shaming. Plenty of secrets and surprises will keep readers captivated until the satisfying end. Knox and Phoebe are white, Maeve has Colombian ancestry, and Bayview is a diverse community.
A can’t-put-down read. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-70796-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
A gripping tribute to resilience.
A girl with amnesia and a boy suspected of harming his girlfriend overcome adversity to find the answers they seek.
A 17-year-old girl wakes up in a ditch, disoriented and with no memory of who she is or what happened. Found by the Alton, Oregon, police, she is brought to the station. Soon after, Wayne Boone, a man claiming to be her father, shows up. He has photos of her on his phone and her high school ID card, with the name Mary Boone. Wayne convinces the police to release Mary into his custody. The more time Mary spends with Wayne, however, the weirder things get: He’s unaware of her food allergy, and as her memories start to return, they don’t conform with Wayne’s versions of her life. In the town of Washington City, across the Willamette River, Drew is in a bad place. His girlfriend, Lola, has disappeared, and Drew was the last person to see her. His adoptive dads and cousin are the only ones who support him; everyone else, including the sheriff, thinks he’s responsible for Lola’s disappearance. Intent on finding Lola, Drew finds help in an unlikely ally, Lola’s best friend, Autumn, who is the sheriff’s daughter. But will they find Lola in time? The two immersive storylines bring to life the trials and frustrations each main character faces in this debut, which is a thrilling delight right up to the unexpected and bittersweet conclusion. Most characters are cued white; one of Drew’s dads is Guatemalan.
A gripping tribute to resilience. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781728270111
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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