THIS IS WHY WE LIE

A shared trauma brings two teens from different sides of the tracks together.

Jenna and Adam barely knew each other before the morning they both happened to be at the beach and Jenna’s classmate Colleen’s dead body turned up. In Gardiners Bay, the boys from the Rookwood Boarding School have a bad reputation—it’s an institution for troubled kids—but good friends Adam, Max, and Tommy are just trying to get by. But when Adam finds Colleen’s body, he knows something must have happened at one of the secret parties the boys throw in the woods. Jenna and her close friends Hollie and Serena attend the exclusive Preston Prep School, but when Hollie becomes the prime suspect in Colleen’s death, Jenna starts her own investigation to prove her friend’s innocence. As they draw closer, Jenna and Adam learn to trust each other even as they lie to protect those they love the most. Jenna and Adam share a narrative that also includes flashbacks, police transcripts, and text messages that together build a fast-paced thriller that paints a portrait of troubled teens. While Jenna and Adam are well-developed protagonists and their budding romance is sweet, paper-thin secondary characters populate a story that ultimately does not fully examine the trope of boy-crazy girls and the bad boys they fall for. All characters are assumed White.

A readable thriller.