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  • And Then There Were Four by Nancy Werlin
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer
Werlin, Nancy And Then There Were Four. Dial, 2017 [416p]
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-8037-4072-3 $18.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-101-63460-8 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys         Ad Gr. 7-10

Five teens from the Rockland Academy are invited to the first meeting of the Leaders Club at the school's old carriage house, which promptly collapses upon them. Fortunately no one dies, but just a few days later Antoine is killed in a freak car crash, and now Saralinda, Kenyon, Evangeline, and Caleb are left wondering if his insistence that the carriage house destruction was no accident and that his murderous mother was responsible is true. The kids jump to the conclusion that all their parents have colluded to take them out without a whole lot of logic, but it leads them to some corrupt cops, helicopter chases, poisoned smoothies, and one seriously psychotic psychiatrist, so if readers suspend a fair amount of disbelief, they're in for an entertaining ride. Chapters alternate focus between emotionally bereft Caleb, who has been convinced by said psychiatrist that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder, and Saralinda, perhaps the most cheerful person to have ever been in a life or death situation, and the narrative contrast gives an odd but satisfying tone to this thriller. Too many conveniences send the story way over the top (a paranoid roommate somehow has tape of Kenyon's grandfather cutting Antoine's car's brake line), though, and the romantic subplots are distractingly generic, particularly lesbian Kenyon's bringing bisexual Evangeline out of the closet. Still, this is high soap-opera stuff, and it may land with readers who prefer their life-threatening situations with a double heap of theatrics.

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