Friends Like These

October 10, 2022
After a heartless joke goes wrong, a California teenager disappears in this complexly plotted mystery by Alvarez (Lies Like Wildfire). Though Jessica Sanchez, 17, and Tegan Sheffield, 18, constantly butt heads over Jessica’s boyfriend Jake Healey, 17, with whom Tegan is in love, Jessica attends Tegan’s end-of-summer house party at Jake’s urging. But Jessica’s security in their romance is shattered when, after she loses track of Jake at the party, TVs throughout the house begin broadcasting a live video feed of him and Tegan having sex. The next morning, Jake wakes up in his own bed with little memory of the party’s events. When Tegan is declared missing, it’s not his only concern. The sex tape has gone viral overnight, given Jake’s status as a minor, prompting the FBI to open an investigation into distribution of child pornography, and other teens have begun mysteriously disappearing. Alvarez keenly divides the narrative into propulsive alternating first-person chapters between Jake, Jessica, her best friend Chloe, and Tegan pre-disappearance to keep readers on their toes while realistic teen dialogue sensitively examines themes of bullying and consent in this jam-packed thriller. Characters default to white. Ages 12–up. Agent: Elizabeth Bewley, Sterling Lord Literistic.