All Your Twisted Secrets

December 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Amber, the music prodigy. Sasha, the queen bee. Priya, the loner. Robbie, the baseball jock. Diego, the valedictorian. Scott, the school drug dealer. What do they all have in common? Nothing apparently, but nevertheless, someone has trapped them in the Chesterfield-under the guise of a scholarship dinner-with a syringe full of poison, a bomb, and a note that says they need to pick one of them to die or else they all will. As the bomb counts down, secrets are revealed about each of them and they come to realize that they may be more alike than previously thought. Debut author Urban adds to the growing collection of contemporary teen mysteries with a serviceable, compelling thriller. The narrative is split between the present and the year leading up to the "scholarship dinner." Readers will be captivated as layers of each teen's life are peeled back to complicate the mystery. Amber is an intriguing protagonist; she still struggles with her sister's suicide, while juggling college applications to film score programs, scoring the school play, and her new and overwhelming relationships with Sasha and Robbie, two of the most popular kids in school. VERDICT Fans of Karen M. McManus's One of Us is Lying and Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars will want to check this one out.-Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn Public Library

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2020
Debut author Urban's high-pressure revenge thriller puts a sinister twist on the escape room motif. Amber is a recently popular high school senior who, after years of avoiding social entanglements, is suddenly thrust into the popular circle. Her musical ambitions lead her to team up with queen bee Sasha to compose the score for an upcoming school play. Though Sasha appears outwardly friendly, Amber slowly learns the machinations of the in crowd and the manipulation required to attain and maintain their social hierarchy. The story of Amber's rise is told in flashbacks as she and a motley crew with tenuous ties try to escape from a terrifying room in which they have been commanded to kill one among them in order to save the rest. Each flashback provides clues to the relationships between and potential motives of each person locked in the death trap. Confusingly, relationships that are alluded to in the present never appear in the flashbacks, and other important plot elements seem thrown in after the fact by way of explanation rather than following logically from the preceding action. Though an unreliable narrator is to be expected, Amber's character is nothing if not inconsistent, leaving the reader to question who the real bad guy is and if they have just been gaslighted yet again. Amber and Sasha are white; there is some diversity in the cast, but the portrayals lack substantive texture. A mixed bag. (Mystery/thriller. 14-18)

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January 27, 2020
In this intense psychological thriller, six teens—“the queen bee, the jock, the brains, the stoner, the loner, and the orchestra geek”—are trapped in a room with a bomb ticking down, a deadly syringe, and a note informing them that “within the hour” they must either select one person to die or face that fate together. Over the next hour, narrator and aspiring composer Amber; her boyfriend, baseball star Robbie; her former best friend Priya; her current bestie, overachiever Sasha; school valedictorian Diego; and resident drug dealer Scott must find a way to either escape or follow their captor’s wishes. As the minutes slip away, tensions grow in the room, resurfacing hidden resentments and old grudges. Alternating chapters set over the previous year further fill in the blanks until an inevitable-seeming clash reveals the students’ darkest secrets. Urban’s debut is a powerful one, rich in emotional turmoil and intracharacter conflict, with a strong message against bullying and a focus on standing up for oneself and one’s goals. Last-minute revelations will undoubtedly require a second close reading, however, and may prove polarizing. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

December 15, 2019
Grades 9-12 Amber (the music genius), Robbie (the jock), Scott (the stoner), Sasha (the popular girl), Priya (the loner), and Diego (the valedictorian) all get an invitation to a dinner with the mayor, celebrating their successful scholarship applications. But they begin to feel somewhat unsettled when the door to their private dining room gets locked from the outside and the thermostat seems to be stuck on high. After deciding the best course of action is to at least eat until someone comes to rescue them, they make a terrible discovery: they have to choose which one of them will die by poisoning, and if they don't choose, a bomb will kill them all. Alternating between their current situation and Amber's recollections of the past, each begins to come up with conspiracies and accusations, pushing all of them to their limits. The Breakfast Club meets Karen M. McManus' One of Us Is Lying (2017) in Urban's adrenaline-fueled thriller, pitting the six teens against one another in a satisfying and delightfully claustrophobic ode to Agatha Christie.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Kate Rudd narrates this psychological thriller with a great setup. Amber recounts a dinner party during which she's one of six teens locked in a room. Escape may mean death for one, or all. Chapters in real-time alternate with Amber's flashbacks over a year as she struggles in relationships with the bullying popular girl and with her lifelong friend. Rudd keeps the tension taut in both parts. She is skilled at portraying the complexity of Amber, who is haunted by her sister's death and caught in painful manipulations. Rudd continually turns up the heat--quite literally at the party, where the thermostat is stuck on high and a bomb is ticking, and metaphorically as Amber has a series of epiphanies about what is actually going on. The twists and turns in this thriller don't end. S.W. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine