Every Last Liar by Kate Francis
Seven teens are brought to an old motel on the one-year anniversary of a fire at their school. They were told they won a luxury weekend trip. It was supposed to be fancy, but this place is abandoned. They have no way of leaving. There is no cell service, no other buildings for miles, and the bus they came on exploded. This book really starts off crazy. And it just keeps getting worse. The teens start getting texts. How is this happening when they don’t have cell service? I don’t know. These text messages accuse the teens of guilt. They must now spend their time choosing who lives and who dies. One by one, they must send one person off to be killed until there is only one left standing.
Of course, I had so many questions. Who set this up? What are all of these teens’ secrets? What did they do? Who will be the last one standing? But also, what if they refuse to play? Can they? The first time the timer started to count down, I was nervous. I always felt like I would be the person to give up during a horrific event (zombie apocalypse, nuclear war fallout, government collapse). I know that I would never be able to survive those types of scenarios. But this is different; they have the chance at a normal life if they can get out alive. I would be so stressed. I don’t think I could vote for someone to die.
As the hours tick by, each person reveals what they are guilty of or what they feel guilty for regarding the fire at the school. The confessions were sort of all over the place. Some had me thinking “that’s not too bad,” while others had me thinking “oh, well, that is pretty bad.” And the way the book chapters are time-stamped so you know just how much or how little time they have makes this such a stressful read! With other books, you know something might happen at some point, but with this book, you see the minutes tick by! Oh, so stressful! It’s like when the timer is counting down in the movies. There were so many times the characters were talking or even just looking at each other, and I was freaking out about the lack of time they had.
There is a wild ending that I think would have students talking. I’m not sure if I would say that it was a satisfying ending, though. I still had some questions, and most of the characters seemed to sort of just go with it. I would have expected a lot more chaos. I feel like this would be a pretty awesome movie, but that ending would probably upset some people. Still an entertaining read overall.
Three out of Five Magical Coffee Cups (eh. 3.5 if I am being honest)
Literary Coffee 