Ten After Closing

August 15, 2018
Two Connecticut teens find themselves in a hostage situation when three armed men come in one night to rob the cafe where Scott works and where Winny has stopped by to see him.Soon it becomes more than just a robbery when one of the men shoots and kills someone. The novel follows what happens, jumping back in time to tell readers about the rest of the day as lived through the eyes of Scott and Winny, high school students who have a history with each other (and a potential future romance despite the fact that Scott was recently dating a friend of Winny's)--not to mention their own life dramas to deal with outside of the harrowing events of the evening. Told from both Scott's and Winny's perspectives, in chapters with alternating timelines that reference the number of minutes or hours before or after the cafe's closing, the novel fails to hit the mark, particularly in the case of a domestic violence subplot that is clumsily handled and problematically resolved. The unfolding of events in the book, from the teens' relationship to the botched robbery and what follows, feels contrived, with inorganic dialogue. The writing also fails to forge a connection to the characters and their relationships. Scott is assumed white, and Winnie is Haitian-American, the daughter of ambitious professional immigrant parents.Leaves much to be desired. (Fiction. 14-18)

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November 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Scott Bradley should be upstairs at the Caf� Flores, where he works. Winny Sommervil should be at home grounded. Instead, they both end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Along with the owners of the caf�, Scott and Winny are taken hostage by armed men, and they must desperately come up with a plan to escape. Avenues for help are consistently blocked, and the hostages are forced to risk their lives in order to survive. Similar in plot to Christine Hurley Deriso's Things I'd Rather Do than Die (2018), Bayliss' YA debut features two high-school seniors trying to break free from harsh obligations set by their families and lead their own lives. The story is told in Scott's and Winny's alternating perspectives, and it also features alternating flashbacks to events of the day before the robbery. Readers will appreciate Scott's and Winny's tenacity and determination to solve their challenging dilemmas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)