Escape Theory
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Sixteen-year-old Devon Mackintosh has always felt like an outsider at Keaton, the prestigious California boarding school perched above the Pacific. As long as she’s not fitting in, Devon figures she might as well pad her application to Stanford’s psych program. So junior year, she decides to become a peer counselor, a de facto therapist for students in crisis. At first, it seems like it will be an easy fly-on-the-wall gig, but her expectations are turned upside down when Jason Hutchins (a.k.a. “Hutch”), one of the Keaton’s most popular students, commits suicide.
Devon dives into her new role providing support for Hutch’s friends, but she’s haunted by her own attachment to him. The two shared an extraordinary night during their first week freshman year; it was the only time at Keaton when she felt like someone else really understood her. As the secrets and confessions pile up in her sessions, Devon comes to a startling conclusion: Hutch couldn't have taken his own life. Bound by her oath of confidentiality—and tortured by her unrequited love—Devon embarks on a solitary mission to get to the bottom of Hutch's death, and the stakes are higher than she ever could have imagined.
Read an excerpt of Escape Theory. http://bit.ly/Yi5DZf
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
TV writer Froley makes a stellar debut with this problem novel/thriller hybrid that might be the boarding school answer to Conroy's The Lords of Discipline. Junior Devon Mackintosh, one of the scholarship student "have-nots" at the ritzy Keaton School, is the school's first peer counselor. When popular student Jason "Hutch" Hutchins dies in a presumed suicide, Devon's therapy sessions with grieving students become much more intense than she expected. Exacerbating matters are Devon's history with Hutch and the secrets she learns from Hutch's girlfriend, best friend, and others, all of which convince her that Hutch couldn't have taken his own life. Meanwhile, Devon's romantic life is heating up, as her friend Grant returns to school looking hunkier than before. Even if the privileged environment and its prescription drug and alcohol abuse have been seen before, Froley uses the setting well, avoiding caricatures and letting her characters' apparent shallowness dissolve, as Devon quizzes them both in and out of therapy. With a heady mix of mystery and emotional turmoil, Froley gives readers compelling character development (even with a large cast) and a fast-paced plot. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
Amazing!
This book was great! You have to read it!
Compelling
This is not just another YA drama. The story probably speaks to those who've had the opportunity to live in the alternate universe that an elite boarding school creates differently than to those that haven't. I am in the former group and know that Margaux captured that non-reality perfectly. While the story feels like the first of what is sure to be an in-depth series (there's so much we're left not knowing or understanding!), it stands on its own successfully. The characters have a voice and good depth; the plot has legs; the dialog is natural... Don't be mislead, though, this isn't a happy-go-lightly book and it might even find a better audience in adults than YA.