Five teens at a private school are invited to a Leader's Club orientation at a dilapidated campus building, and then the roof falls in terally. Someone, maybe plural, is trying to kill them, but what does this unlikely group have in common? Except for Antoine and Evangeline, they barely know each other though Saralinda does have a crush on Caleb. Those two are the alternating narrators, and from them we learn that diabetic, physically challenged Saralinda lives with a smothering mother who would like her daughter to be dependent on her. Caleb's father is a celebrity psychiatrist who has convinced his son that the boy is a bad seed, a danger to everyone around him. Although the psychology of the kids d their parents a huge part of the story, it's the nonstop action that sweeps readers along. People are on the run, bodies are piling up, and murder is in the air. Up until the last moment, it's not clear who is going to make it out alive. Over the top, definitely, but also a compulsive read.

Five students survive a building collapse, but one dies shortly afterward in an accident. The remaining students come to a startling conclusion: their parents are involved in a conspiracy to murder them. Werlin simultaneously deepens characterization and unfolds the plot in alternating narrative voices from two of the teens. The plot taps into teen paranoia that adults are out to get them.

After a roof mysteriously collapses on five students from Rockland Academy, the teens realize their parents wants them dead. One teen is white, one is a brown-skinned Haitian-American, one is Korean-American, one is Latino, and one is "darkish." Two of them alternate narration as the group investigates the convoluted conspiracy, growing desperate after one member is murdered. Brown-skinned Saralinda, who juggles a club foot, diabetes, an overprotective mother, and a quirky cane named Georgia, narrates in flowery, frantic, run-on sentences that reveal her oddly self-deprecating wit as well as the anxiety engendered by her mother's constant supervision. Caleb, the Latino son of a famous psychiatrist, narrates in the second person, believing that an "internal evil twin" performs terrible deeds he can't remember. Their distinct voices and their conflicting feelings toward their parents (and each other) would pack quite an emotional punch were the narrative's focus on them a little sharper. The other characters' expository back stories are crowded with drama, but there's little room to develop their rather one-note personalities amid helicopter chases; exploding cars; escapes aided by convenient kind strangers; burgeoning straight and (hackneyed) lesbian romance; surprising weapons; elaborate ruses; and timely confessions. Filicide, still a somewhat taboo and weighty issue, feels reduced to another gimmick in the onslaught of over-the-top schemes. Fans of nonstop action will appreciate the breakneck pace, but those hoping for plumbing of character may grow fatigued. (Thriller. 14-18)

Five teenagers at New York City-s prestigious Rockland Academy uncover a murder plot, and signs point to their parents as the killers. Drawing heavily on Agatha Christie-s And Then There Were None and glossy dramas like Pretty Little Liars, Werlin (Extraordinary) bands her teens around tragedy rather than common interest. There-s Saralinda de la Flor, an outcast with diabetes and a club foot; Antoine Dubois, star soccer player and class president; Caleb Colchester, son of an eminent psychiatrist, who claims to have a Mr. Hyde-like dark side; Evangeline Song, the acerbic, beautiful brain; and Martha -Kenyon- McKenyon, the proudly queer transfer student with a tragic backstory. Gathering for a student leaders meeting in a rundown corner of the school, the gang narrowly escapes death when the roof caves in, and that-s just the beginning of a series of not-accidents aimed at knocking them off. The teens- leap to determining that their parents may be responsible is a stretch, particularly given the ensemble cast, but Werlin creates palpable suspense as she alternates between Saralinda and Caleb-s points of view. Ages 14-up. Agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. (June)

Saralinda, Caleb, Kenyon, Evangeline, and Antoine are students at a prestigious boarding school. They are scheduled to attend a meeting of the Student Leaders Club in an old carriage house on campus. As they wait for an advisor to arrive, the building collapses around them and they barely manage to survive. Soon after, one of them dies, and the remaining four become suspicious. It becomes clear to the teens that their parents have entered into a pact to kill them, and they are forced to run. In the midst of figuring out how to survive off the grid and trying to comprehend why their parents might want them dead, they still manage to find time for romance. Two couples emerge. Ultimately, resolution is achieved, but it is a resolution that matches the darkness of the subject matter.