ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS

Kate Rudd narrates this psychological thriller with a great setup. Amber recounts a dinner party during which she's one of six teens locked in a room. Escape may mean death for one, or all. Chapters in real-time alternate with Amber's flashbacks over a year as she struggles in relationships with the bullying popular girl and with her lifelong friend. Rudd keeps the tension taut in both parts. She is skilled at portraying the complexity of Amber, who is haunted by her sister's death and caught in painful manipulations. Rudd continually turns up the heat--quite literally at the party, where the thermostat is stuck on high and a bomb is ticking, and metaphorically as Amber has a series of epiphanies about what is actually going on. The twists and turns in this thriller don't end. S.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2020]