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My Rating: 4 stars

Four friends, Sara, Alice, Polly and Jessica plan to throw a party to commence the start of a new school year, their senior year. The party ends up being bigger than expected, but by the end, who was hooking up and who was fighting was the farthest things from their minds. The unthinkable happens: someone is killed. Or did they kill themselves? The question haunts all who were still at the party and came across the body. Michael, a close friend of Alice, whom she planned to introduce to Jessica, takes it as his personal mission to figure out who killed this person if they did not kill themselves. After this tragic event, nowhere is safe. Danger follows these seniors to the homecoming dance and even their big graduation party. Although the truth is terrifying, their lives depend on it.
First off, this book is definitely not a book I would have picked out myself. My sister gave it to me for Christmas. It was a total of 846 pages, and I will admit that I was a little intimidated at first. I haven’t read a book this long in a while. It was hard to get into at first, I wasn’t a huge fan of Pike’s writing style, but after a while I got used to it. Taking into consideration this book was first published in the late 1980’s, I understand his writing isn’t completely up to date and is a little immature. I just feel that some of the things said by the main characters wouldn’t really have been said by seniors today. But that aside, the plot was really good. I have a new interest in murder mystery novels, although this one does go against the typical murder mystery. It led you to believe one thing, until the end, where everything changed. Speaking of the ending, I wasn’t a huge fan of it. The ending didn’t really give any closure to the characters. It lets the reader make up their own ending, and decide where the characters will go in the future. I have a love/hate relationship with endings like that, but after I think about it, it does fit this book well. I’m really glad I read this book.