Mirjana **DTR - Down to Read**'s Reviews > All Your Twisted Secrets

***3.5 Stars***

The thing about being trapped in a room with five other people, a bomb, and a syringe of lethal poison is that at some point, shit’s going down. No matter how frantically you claw at rationality, how desperately you cling to common decency, you eventually give in to your basic instinct to survive.

HOLY HELL how do I rate and review this? This book was impossible to put down, but I’m completely disappointed with the ending. WTF do I do with that?

But let’s start from the beginning.

The Breakfast Club meets SAW.

The queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek are trapped in a room with a syringe filled with poison and a bomb ticking down from 1 hour. They have ONE HOUR to decide who gets the lethal dose or the bomb goes off and they all die.

Told from Amber’s (the music geek) point of view, we watch panic set in as thoughts go from “this is a prank” to “whose life is expendable.”

The story also goes back and forth between past and present and we’re shown how all six of the attendees are interconnected…and we quickly realize that they all have one common denominator…Amber.

I figured things out pretty early, even though the author provides some twists and turns to keep you guessing about who may be behind the game. I’d change my mind for a few short pages, but eventually I always settled back on my initial guess.

The whole time while reading, you’re building towards two things: (one) the past and present merging, and (two) that clock counting down and a decision being made.

Unfortunately, when we reach the big climax, it felt like a letdown. The edge-of-your-seat intensity that we got while watching these characters scramble to find reason for murder, fizzled in the final pages.

For how high the stakes were and what ended up actually going down, the resolution and explanation was unbelievably casual.

Content Warning: Bullying and suicide