A MILLION TIMES GOODNIGHT

Hadley spends the night of her life facing two different but equally dangerous paths.

It’s the night of the big spring-break party, and 17-year-old Hadley and her two best friends “borrow” Hadley’s boyfriend’s BMW without permission to revisit the scene of their friend Penny’s death, exactly one year before. In retaliation, her boyfriend, Ben, posts a naked picture of Hadley on Facebook and won’t take it down until Hadley returns his car. Hadley must decide: go back to the party and make Ben take down the picture or take a road trip far away from Oak Grove, Ohio, the mostly white suburb where she and her friends live. Subsequent chapters alternate between the fallout from Hadley’s return to the party to confront Ben and revealing what would happen if she takes the road trip instead. Both paths put Hadley and her friends in serious danger as they uncover terrible truths about what really happened to Penny. The novel is a fast-paced thriller with plot twists, intrigue, and revelations practically on every page. While the story offers a rekindled romance and wild adventure, its characters are disappointingly flat. Hadley has moxie, but otherwise she and her friends are fairly cookie-cutter teens.

Clever, taut storytelling helps to overcome bland characterization.