Welcome! Check out the author's guest post about her characters and the giveaway below...
All Your Twisted SecretsYA Thriller, Mystery
Hardcover, Paperback & ebook, 400 Pages
March 17th 2020 by HarperTeen
Summary
This thrilling debut, reminiscent of new fan favorites like One of Us Is Lying and the beloved classics by Agatha Christie, will leave readers guessing until the explosive ending.
Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.
What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.
Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?
Guest Post: The Characters
All Your Twisted Secrets is about Amber Prescott, a 17-year-old aspiring film score producer who arrives at an invite-only dinner and is locked into the deserted restaurant with five other students. They uncover a tray with a syringe of poison, a bomb, and a note that reads: “Within the hour, you must choose someone in this room to die. If you don’t, everyone dies.”
In this post, I’d love to introduce you to all six of our main characters! While All Your Twisted Secrets is a fast-paced thriller, the heart of the story is Amber’s relationships and how she deals with many of the pressures teens face today, from bullying to college admissions to losing a sibling.
Illustrations by cover artist Evgeni Koroliov
Amber Prescott — the music nerd
All Your Twisted Secrets is told from Amber's quirky POV. Her dream is to attend music school at USC, make the right connections in LA, and become a film score producer. But she knows how cutthroat USC admissions are, so she’s dead set on bulking up her resume.
In order to impress the pants off the admissions panel, Amber wants to craft an original score for the school play. But that means she’ll need to win over drama club director Sasha Harris — the school’s intimidating queen bee. Meanwhile, she’s juggling a new relationship with baseball star Robbie, a dissolving friendship with Priya, and a crush on Diego (even after his betrayal)... not to mention the crushing guilt over her older sister's death.
But once she’s locked in the room, her priorities change, and she’s determined to get everyone out alive. Amber orchestrates friends and foes alike to work together, grappling with the clashing personalities of her jock boyfriend, her nerd crush, her former best friend, the queen bee, and the stoner.
Diego Martin – the valedictorian
Diego is the class valedictorian… as long as Sasha doesn’t steamroll him from the top spot. He’s a cute uber geek who loves wearing Star Wars-themed shirts, being on his school's Science Olympiad team, and dabbling in photography. He's also had a brush with fame:
“As if being ridiculously smart wasn’t enough, Diego was sort of a celebrity in our school. He’d invented a weird sponge that changed colors when it got wet, and was on the show Bid or Bust… he and his dad sold millions of SpongeClowns.”
Amber has also had a crush on him for ages, but after what he and his adoptive dad did to betray Amber’s father… well, let’s just say, a relationship's kinda out of the question.
Sasha Harris – the queen bee
Sasha is a queen bee with a severe multitasking complex. She’s everything everyone else wants to be — cheerleading captain, drama club director, and class president. Sleep isn’t exactly in her vocabulary. She’s also rumored to have quite the mean streak.
After Amber lost her older sister a few years ago, she’s withdrawn from her social circles and avoided people like Sasha. But if she wants to score the school play, she’ll have to muster the guts to talk to her, since she’s drama club director.
“...I had to talk to her, Sasha freaking Harris, basically royalty at Brewster High—haughty pretentious, and intimidating as hell, yet inexplicably revered.”
Somehow, Amber and Sasha bond over the year… and by the time they’re locked into the room together, they’re BFFs. But will it stay that way?
Robbie Nelson – the star athlete
Robbie is an all-star baseball player who just nabbed a scholarship to play on Georgia Tech’s team. Think he’s a jock? Think again—he’s actually a giant goofball; he tells the cheesiest jokes, thinks pure-emoji text convos are hilarious, and is on a mission to teach his girlfriend Amber’s dad to play Fortnite. Though Robbie wants Amber to follow him and his baseball scholarship to school, Amber’s not so sure…
“I might’ve fallen in love with Robbie, but I’d been in love with music for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t let him tempt me into abandoning my dreams.”
Priya Gupta – the loner
Priya is an introvert who takes a while to open up to people, but once she does, she’s silly and bubbly. She adores everything having to do with magic, from fantasy novels like Harry Potter to David Thurston’s Netflix series “Manic Magic.” She’s even started her own YouTube channel to show off her own illusions, and Amber composes the scores for her videos.
At least… she used to.
Saying that Priya and Amber were best friends would be an understatement. They’d been like sisters. But their friendship collapsed somehow over the past year, and by the time they’re trapped in the room together, Amber wonders if Priya will ever speak to her again.
Scott Coleman – the stoner
Scott is the class clown and has a reputation as the class stoner, although Amber only actually spotted him smoking in a stairwell at school once. The two of them were friends when they were little, before they realized how little they have in common. But he still calls Amber “Red,” and they maintain some of their banter from way back when.
He also knows some “dirty little secret” Sasha’s been hiding… will Amber be able to wheedle it out of him?
And now they’re all locked in the room together with a terrible ultimatum. And as the bomb’s timer ticks down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to uncover who locked them in… and who’s going to die. I hope that everyone enjoys getting to know these characters and trying to figure out what secrets each of them is hiding!
About the Author
I’m Diana Urban, and I write dark, twisty thrillers for teens including All Your Twisted Secrets (HarperTeen, March 17th 2020). When I’m not torturing fictional characters, I’m a marketing manager at BookBub, a leading book discovery platform. Outside the bookish world, I live with my husband and cat in Boston, and enjoy reading, video games, fawning over cute animals, and looking at the beach from a safe distance.
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Are you an Agatha Christie fan like I am? Will you be reading this one? From the author's guest post, which character are you most curious about?
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