"Stacked with shocking twists, this is the perfect YA summer read for fans of super-tense thrillers."
With a classic closed-room set up (in this case, the setting is a creepy closed motel, and an ever-decreasing circle), Kate Francis’ Circle of Liars is an addictive edge-of-your-seat YA thriller from intriguing start to unexpected end.
A group of high schoolers thrown together in the depths of the Californian desert get a whole lot more than they bargained for when they arrive to discover that Motel Loba is run-down and deserted. They’re here thinking they’ve won the top prize in their annual school raffle, but this dive couldn’t be further from the luxury desert retreat they were expecting. What’s more, the trip coincides with the first anniversary of a fatal fire in their school — a fire that killed the twin brother of one of the seven individuals who find themselves at the motel. There’s no staff, no phone reception, and so the group decide to get the hell away as fast as possible, but it soon emerges that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Hot on the heels of an explosive incident near the start of the story, all seven teenagers receive an ominous text: “I know what you did a year ago. Now it is time to pay the price”. In the wake of this, the group find themselves trapped in a circle, forced to select the guiltiest among them to step outside it at hourly intervals, lest they’ll all be killed. “Happy anniversary”, the message signs off.
Rippling with suspicion, paranoia, and the excruciation of having to make impossible decisions in the name of self-preservation, Circle of Liars is a thrillingly tense and wildly unexpected rollercoaster.
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
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