A chilling new young-adult thriller about four teens whose dark secrets come back to terrorize them. Someone from the past is blackmailing Sam and his friends with their dangerous secrets. Sam isn’t sure who he can trust, who’s watching him – or how far he’s willing to go to bury the past once and for all.

Sam Hall hopes he has left everything in the past about his fall from stardom. He participates in a secret cathartic ritual with a few of his friends where they vocalize their worst secrets in private in a wooden hut in the woods. But their ritual is interrupted by a strange occurrence and a series of texts from somebody intent on bringing their secrets to light. What seems like a prank at first slowly grows into something much more – a stalker taking pictures of Sam’s little sister from his front window, an attempted attack from masked strangers on a lonely road at night, and daring and threatening messages that get increasingly bolder.

Author Vincent Ralph not only delivers on suspense and mystery, but masterfully intertwines multiple storylines into a plot that begins as a simple prank and expands, like ripples in a pond, to rock everyone in its wake. This is a book that makes you go back to the beginning and search for the little details early on that become important clues about the motive and identity of the blackmailer revealed in the end. Most chapters end with a new clue that keeps you turning the pages right to the end. This book is sure to make you avoid dark places in the woods for a while, and make you suspicious of everyone you encounter (including your closest friends and neighbors!)

-James Steeves