Review: The Dare - Natasha Preston - May 2024 One of my favorite YA thriller authors is Natasha Preston and The Dare, this was another twisted YA read and I have to say I did not see this ending coming exactly, it was WOW- such a twisted and complex ending that in the end made this book worth reading. It's senior year and at Marley's high school, that means it's prank time which is given by the most popular boys in the school which this year is Rhett's turn. Rhett and Marley when they were younger were good friends but drifted apart. Marley hates this part as the pranks tend to ruin good people's lives and unlike Rhett's family who can buy themselves out of trouble, not everyone can. Marley's group of friends are dared to drive their car in the pitch black and with no lights on, they do this of course, and hit someone - very much the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer starts to happen from this point on, where Marley feels guilty and her friends are lik...

Review: The Island - Natasha Preston - February 2023 When I saw that Natasha Preston had a new YA novel out, I just knew I had to read it as she is one of my favorites for YA thrillers. I have read most of her backlist, I only have a couple more to go. The Island starts with a familiar theme these days in books, especially since the boom of social media. These days with technology we live in a world of influencers- be it make-up tutorials, gaming, books, crime - all sorts are streaming these days and if you end up hitting the right audience and becoming popular, you can earn a good living too. It also helps if you come from wealthy parents like the influencers do in this book as you can focus all your energy and buy the top equipment needed. There is a new gothic exclusive theme park opening up on the island and six influencers have been invited for a preview weekend before it opens to the public. This is an opportunity of a lifetime as the park will cost $6000 a night per person to ...

Review: The Fear - Natasha Preston - March 2022 I have been excited to read this book by Natasha Preston as she is one of my favorite YA thriller authors. This book though had a great premise and started well, but about halfway I felt disappointed and the killer was too obvious for my liking. The book starts with a new meme going viral on the first day of school - what is your worst way to die? Over the next few days, many of the students will repost this. Everyone is except for Axel and Izzy. One night after a teen party, two of the students are found dead and now people are talking about it as a murder-suicide pact, or is it something more sinister? Who is killing the students of the town and making them relive their ultimate fear of dying? Can Izzy find out who the killer is before more of the town's students are killed? This was a fun YA thriller read, but perfect for those who are aged 13+, as I felt like this particular one was a bit too obvious with the killer revealed and...

Review: The Lake - Natasha Preston - March 2021 One of my favorite YA Horror readers is Natasha Preston as her books are similar in style to the 90'/00's Christopher Pike/ Lois Duncan style where they are reminiscent of movies like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc. In The Lake by Natasha Preston, we meet Esme and Kayla who are best friends and ten years ago were campers at Camp Pine, and after that summer vowed never to go back and buried the incident - blood pact and all. Now Ten years later, the girls received brochures in the mail welcoming them back to Camp Pine with the threat, that they better be there or else. Esme is a bit more anxious as she believes someone else knows what happened and is ready to spill the beans whereas Kayla is not worried one bit and wants to spend the summer enjoying herself and hooking up with a cute guy. However, what will happen though when strange things start happening at the camp and then their fellow counselors start to notice t...

Review: The Twin - Natasha Preston - March 2020 One of my favorite things to read is YA thrillers and I have been a fan of Natasha Preston's ever since I first read The Cabin and loved all the crazy twists and turns and the OMG moments. So when I saw The Twin come up in our library catalog, I knew I had to read it. I do have to admit as I was reading this book, it was a storyline I felt that I had read before - a few things seemed familiar, it could mainly be though that I do read a lot of YA thrillers and find Natasha Preston's work to be similar to Christopher Pike's and Lois Duncan's books which were popular in the mid to late 90s/early 2000s. In The Twin, we meet Ivy and Iris - when they were ten years old, their parents divorced and now they are in their last years of high school. Ivy went and lived with her Dad and Iris with their mother. Over the years, the girls started to become more like cousins rather than twins as they distanced. The b...