Bingo Square: North America
A group of teens goes on a volunteering trip with their school, only to be the victims of a tragic accident. There are nine survivors, but on the first anniversary of the accident, one of them kills themselves. Reeling from shock, the remaining eight make a pact to be there for each other, and on every subsequent anniversary they meet at a beach house for a week. Checking in, being there, even though, as adults now, they have little to nothing in common.
10 year in, Cassidy is trying to break ties. She wants to move on and blocks calls and emails from the others. But then she receives a message, has she seen? Another of their number has died. And so she returns to the beach house. Her friends are skittish, there’s a storm rolling in, and another of their number has wandered off. Is she safe? Avoiding them on purpose? Or has something terrible happened to her? And will all of them finally face the truth about what really happened all those years ago, and their roles in it?
I read this in a day. It was absolutely the right book at the right time for me. It reminded me very much of a grown up Christopher Pike book, like The Weekend or The Snowman, and as someone who devoured those books as a teen, I mean that as the highest compliment. There’s also a smidge of I Know What You Did Last Summer, And Then There Were None, Yellowjackets even. And none of this is said as if the author is mining media for ideas, it just felt nicely familiar and hooked me in immediately. I also really enjoyed the structure. It gives us flashbacks of the night of the accident, but told backwards, so we get their last hour of being stuck/struggling to survive first, and learn more about what happened as we get closer to the end. It’s a great way to keep us guessing and fully immersed. She also did a great job of making me care about all of the characters, even when I was wondering if I should.
I’ll definitely check out some more by the author.