A rebellious spring-break trip turns deadly in this new trilogy starter. Rich-girl Genesis is used to getting her way, so when she suggests traveling to Colombia for school vacation, her friends and cousin follow. Cousin Maddie isn't impressed with Genesis' sense of entitlement and would prefer to explore Colombia for their family history, but Genesis has other ideas. When a hiking trip turns into a hostage situation, Genesis knows their kidnappers are there for her and her family's money. As tension grows between the hostages and the kidnappers, and true terrorist goals come to light, no one is safe. Vincent (The Stars Never Rise, 2015) builds the story's tension by using a clever countdown to drive the stakes higher and narrating from alternating points of view. Genesis and her cohort are rather petty at times, especially when faced with a truly dangerous situation. The cliffhanger ending means everyone is still in trouble by the novel's end, but teens looking for light suspense will find this an enjoyable new series.

Two Latina cousins are trapped in a web of violence that exposes hard truths about their family.Genesis is beautiful and rich—the center of every crowd, thanks to her assertive personality. Her cousin Maddie isn't like that, and she hates how she lets herself get swept up by Genesis. Instead of going to the Bahamas for spring break, Genesis takes Maddie and Maddie's brother, Ryan, along with several other friends, including white boyfriend Holden, to the cousins' fathers' native Colombia, searching for authenticity, away from tourists. They find it on a hike into a national park when the group is taken hostage. Amid her romantic drama, Genesis searches for the reason why the mustache-twirling kidnappers want to use Genesis and her cousins as leverage with Genesis' wealthy father, compelling him to help their cause. When Genesis and Maddie discover they're not kidnappers but terrorists, they want to stop them—but how can two teenage girls stop terrorists? This first novel in a planned trilogy arbitrarily covers the titular 100 hours, but it spends far too much time establishing the characters before they are kidnapped. Although she mentions the real terrorist group FARC in passing, Vincent's terrorists aren't identified as belonging to a particular group; their anti-American plot effectively and unfortunately obscures Colombia's actual experiences with violence. While there is plenty of action, switching between Genesis and Maddie undercuts the tension—yet somehow doesn't really create much feeling in readers for either character. A paint-by-numbers thriller and superfluous romantic complications create high stakes without any real emotional engagement. (Thriller. 14-18)

After opening in a local Cartagena bar thumping with dance music, moneyed jealousies, alcohol, and flirtations rife with heavy petting, Vincent’s novel unfolds through nightmarish scenes in mountainous jungles and along pristine Caribbean beaches. Told in the alternating first-person narratives of cousins Genesis and Maddie, what begins as a daring adventure turns gruesome as the American tourists and their international acquaintances are captured at gunpoint by two rival Guerrilla factions and held for ransom. Genesis is an overly privileged heiress to an international shipping magnate. Bored with Miami’s social life, she diverts the pilot of their spring break plane headed to the Bahamas to Colombia, the homeland of her father, which he has forbidden her to visit. Maddie is the less-privileged, more practical cousin who is more humane than her somewhat predatory cousin. Tensions mount as the diabetic Maddie’s insulin reserves dip low and her brother becomes the first casualty of their misadventure. This is another survival tale told in a confusing retrospective of snapshots beginning one hundred hours before the climactic conclusion, which could well be the jumping-off point for the anticipated companion novel of a planned duology. While Vincent’s story smoothly mixes English with Spanish and a smattering of French, the money, privilege, and power are overdone from the outset. Alcohol, sex, money, and marijuana are these characters’ pleasures of choice, while cocaine is the evil pawn of terrorists and drug cartels—even when those evil characters happen to be family.—Cynthia Winfield.