PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge Prompt: A book with a great first line ("I spent the last hour wondering if I would die tonight.")

Other PS 2020 reading prompts this would satisfy: A book that's published in 2020, A book about or involving social media, A book featuring one of the seven deadly sings (greed, envy), A book with at least a four-star rating on Goodreads, A book with more than 20 letters in its title


TW: Bullying, suicide, drug use, body hatred, underage drinking, death, violence



Holy crap. I had no idea how much I was going to love All Your Twisted Secrets when I picked it up, but I was hooked from page one - which is pretty rare for me. And I truly had such a difficult time putting it down. I literally stayed up until 2 am on a work night to keep reading, and this woke up two hours early to finish the book before work, which is literally unheard of for me.


Aspiring film scorer Amber is invited to a local scholarship dinner alongside some friends and frenemies - her jock boyfriend, her queen bee bff, her loner ex-best friend, her valedictorian childhood friend and crush, and the school stoner. But when they arrive at the dinner, they get locked in a room with a syringe full of poison and a live bomb. They have an hour to decide one person to die, or the bomb will go off and they'll all be dead. As the countdown begins, secrets start to come out and tensions rise. 


This book was seriously written so well. I love YA and I love thrillers, but I haven't read many YA thrillers. If All Your Twisted Secrets is any indication of the genre, then I have totally been missing out. The characters are all flawed, but they're mostly easy to connect with and relate to as well. They're teenagers, so things aren't black and white. Each is well developed and so it's easy to get infuriated at their mistakes and to also empathize with their struggles.

The chapters switch from the chaos of the scholarship dinner to previous year and a half. So throughout the novel, you're learning backstory for the characters and their relationships to each other, which then fuels the fire of the dinner. I was so damn wrapped up in the book and just had to know what was going to happen next. I found myself being shocked throughout, and though there were lots of twists and turns, I didn't find the story to be too completely unbelievable.

And the big twist... I didn't see it coming, but it totally made sense.






Seriously, this book is incredible. The writing is sharp and the story is easy to follow. The characters are flawed but relatable in a lot of ways. It's Breakfast Club meets Saw, and it's a hell of an exciting ride.



Goodreads rating: ★★★★★














*Thanks so much to Epic Reads for providing this review copy free in exchange for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.