Book Review :: All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
ISBN: 0062908227
on 17 March 2020
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult
Pages: 400
Goodreads

“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?

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What is All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban about?

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban begins with an invitation. Amber and 5 other students from her high school – her boyfriend Robbie, a childhood friend, an ex-bestie, a new bestie and the school drug dealer – have been invited to a dinner with the premise that they have been accepted to receive 20K scholarship. Naturally, they all head along.

“It wasn’t our mistakes that defined us, but how we learned to overcome them. Everyone should have a chance to overcome theirs.”

But Amber and the rest of the group soon realise there’s been a mix-up. And something’s seriously wrong. It’s not the meeting or dinner they thought it was. There before them in the room, in which they have been locked, is a note telling them that they need to decide which one of them will die, or the bomb in the room will go off and kill them all. They have one hour.

My Thoughts on All Your Twisted Secrets

I, for the most part, enjoyed All Your Twisted Secrets. It was a very typical, predictable Young Adult mystery, but it was a nice short read all the same. You didn’t need to concentrate very much, it’s not that deep or complicated when it comes to a lot of characters.

The book is told in two timelines; first, the hour of chaos that ensues in the room in real-time, and second, told from the perspective of Amber, the months and events leading up to the 6 is in the room. We’re introduced to the characters in the room through the eyes of Amber in the past and begin to piece together a picture of who might be behind them all being in the room.

Speaking of characters, they were a little bland in my mind. Even our main character and narrator of the story, Amber, seemed contradictory to her own self and also her back story. I don’t want to say too much, for fear of giving it all away, but there were definitely moments near the end where I really wondered if Amber would do what she did.

It was a simple plot, with a few elements in it that made me think about the culprit and who might be the mastermind, and when it was eventually revealed it wasn’t surprising.

All that to say, that I did enjoy it for what it was – a simply whodunnit (or who is doing it, as the case might be), and a pretty classic Young Adult novel. I would definitely read other books by Diana Urban, but wouldn’t read this one again.

Have you read All Your Twisted Secrets? What did you think?