It’s the last weeks of Marley’s senior year at her small town high school, which means senior dares are soon to be passed around. This was once a fun but
adrenaline filled rite of passage, but in the past few years, some of the dares have become dangerous and frightening. Not only completing the dare a scary prospect, NOT completing the dare is just as scary.
The brothers of the most powerful and wealthy family have dished out the dares each year, and someone who refused was made a terrible example of, ruining lives.
Marley isn’t happy at the fact that her ex best friend Rhett Wilder is the one dealing dares this year. They used to be together constantly until one day Rhett just stopped talking to her for no reason. Now a few years down the track, she has never forgiven him. He proves he is worth hating as he saves the worst dares for her and her friends – Atlas, Lucia, and Jesse.
They too know what’s at stake and can’t let anything tarnish their future plans of football and college. They accept worse and worse dares – just to get it over with. But one dare goes terribly wrong and Marley knows they will all be changed forever.
She struggles with their secret, and her friends can see it. They turn on her, becoming even more paranoid about her spilling the truth, than she is. Still, she is being eaten up by guilt – until she learns the truth about her so called friends.
One crime after another stirs up their town and tension builds to a powerful and crazed crescendo. Marley has to save herself from everyone who is out to lay all the blame at her door.
Natasha Preston has done it again with a plot driven YA novel that delivers twists, betrayal, spilled secrets and revenge.
Main character Marley discovers that the friends that have been by her side all through high school are not the people she thought they were, and she is out to prove them wrong about her too. This rachets up the tension and paranoia builds in everyone, as the body count rises.
Told in Marley’s point of view, we get to know her more than her friends. Emotions run high throughout, but failing friendships, gut punch betrayals and keeping terrible secrets mess with Marley’s head, until they steel her resolve.
An entertaining read.
Author – Natasha Preston
Age – 13+
Find more thrilling reads by Natasha Preston here
(2024, Betrayal, Crime, Friendship, Murder, Mystery, Revenge, School, Secret, Dares, Accident, Relationships, Drugs, Money, Power, Land, Police, Small town, Consequences, Guilt, Body, Paranoia)