Praise for Teen Killers Club:
"Sparks crafts a page-turner with a disturbingly unusual premise, snappy dialogue, and characters that go deeper than their heinous crimes...Equal parts heartfelt and shocking."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Sparks creates a contemporary dystopian world and deftly weaves in details about her characters’ pasts.”
—Library Journal
“A fast-paced, suspenseful novel, perfect for true-crime fans.”
—Booklist
“Everything one could possibly want in a YA: psychotic killers, tender moments, and friendships that will last forever.”
—Suspense Magazine
“This book rivals Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Naturals series and Allen Zadoff’s The Unknown Assassin series...Fabulous romance, fabulous cast, fabulous mystery.”
—Portland Book Review
“Balanced, entertaining while exposing our society’s treatment of teenage criminals well.”
—BookRiot
“Full of dark and twisted moments...Teen Killers Club is highly addictive and full-on entertaining.”
—Fresh Fiction
“A solid thriller with characters you root for and some well placed twists and turns.”
—Red Carpet Crash
“Sick, twisted, fast-paced fun. With an entertaining voice and a nicely plotted murder mystery, this summer camp for psychos is frankly the only kind of summer camp I want to read about.”
—Kendare Blake, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Dark Crowns and Anna Dressed in Blood
"Action packed, highly addictive and uncomfortably heartfelt—readers won't be able to forget Teen Killers Club or its characters who refuse to fit into any mold."
—Joelle Charbonneau, New York Times bestselling author of The Testing
"A coming-of-age mystery that will keep you guessing to the very end.”
—Barry Lyga, New York Times bestselling author of I Hunt Killers
"A dark, wild ride. Just when you think this thriller can't get any crazier or more suspenseful, Sparks turns the screws even tighter, leading to a surprising climax that will keep you turning the pages. My advice: Start reading and hang on tight!"
—Jeffry W. Johnston, author of The Truth
“A wild ride from start to finish with fresh and fascinating developments at every turn. It gripped me right away and didn’t let me go until I reached the last page.”
—J.R. Johansson, author of The Row
“Sparks’ fresh perspective and cast of felonious (but fun) characters makes this a thriller worthy of sinking your teeth into!”
—Hannah Jayne, author of Truly, Madly, Deadly
"A twisty, twisted ride with a wicked sense of humor."
—Margot Harrison, author of The Glare
"A wild mystery that reads like all the best parts of American Horror Story—twisty and twisted, effortlessly hip, and surprisingly romantic.”
—Cassandra Rose Clarke, author of Forget This Ever Happened
"Teen Killers Club has everything, featuring an intriguing and likable cast of characters forced into an impossible and unthinkable mission with a twisted ending I didn’t see coming!”
—Sheryl Scarborough, author of To Right the Wrongs
“Wildly inventive and darkly subversive, this sly adventure adroitly balances action, romance, and deep questions about the ways society—and each of us—judges those around us.”
—Jon McGoran, author of Spliced
10/01/2020
Gr 9 Up—Tucked in a remote Oregon forest is Camp Naramauke, a seemingly abandoned sleepaway camp but really home to a select group of violent teenagers. It is here that Signal Deere, accused of killing her childhood friend Rose, is brought after her release from juvenile detention, not to be rehabilitated but to be trained to kill without being caught. But Signal, who sports blue hair, hides a secret. She did not kill Rose, and her innocence sets her apart from the campers, who are proudly Class A, the most dangerous criminal distinction. At camp, Signal meets dark-blond Erik, who senses her innocence and wants to prove that she was framed, and Javier, a tall, artistic teen to whom she is drawn. When the campers are sent out on a mission to kill, Signal faces her greatest challenges yet while attempting to escape from the Teen Killers Club. In her debut YA thriller, Sparks creates a contemporary dystopian world and deftly weaves in details about her characters' pasts. Readers may not pick up on the subtle clues about Rose's murder, and the solution is too neatly revealed. Characters' ethnicity and appearance, other than hair color, aren't indicated. VERDICT Many will enjoy the suspense within these pages.—Gillian D'Ambrosio, Rutgers Univ., NJ
★ 2020-09-10
An accused murderer is thrust into an assassin training program.
Seventeen-year-old Signal Deere is serving hard time after a hazy night with her former best friend, Rose, which ended with Rose’s body in her lap, an emotional trial, and the media moniker the “Girl from Hell.” After her caseworker, Dave, assures Signal there’s no way she’ll get a successful appeal, he offers her an alternative: being shipped off to a mysterious camp and enrolled in a top-secret government training program unofficially known as the Teen Killers Club. There, Signal and other adolescent Class A felons (the most dangerous kind) undergo various drills—among them, dismembering fake corpses and dissolving flesh in acid—in preparation for eventually being used as assassins against government targets. The teens have been injected with a device remotely controlled by their trainers that will kill them if they attempt to escape the camp or otherwise disobey orders. As Signal nurses an attraction to sensitive tattooed Javier and fights her feelings for handsome sociopath Erik, she begins to piece together what really happened that night with Rose. Sparks crafts a page-turner with a disturbingly unusual premise, snappy dialogue, and characters that go deeper than their heinous crimes. Signal and Erik are assumed White; love interest Javier is cued as Latinx, and there is some diversity in the supporting cast.
A mystery/thriller that’s equal parts heartfelt and shocking. (Thriller. 15-adult)
