Tagline: It started as a game…and ended in death.
Back tagline: The truth hurts.
Summary: What else is there to do, with all seven of them stuck in Dara Harker’s luxury ski condo? There are three guys and four girls—some of them friends, some nearly strangers—all of them trapped. A blinding blizzard has stilled the lifts, blocked the roads, and killed the phones.
A game, they think, will help them break the ice. Who will tell the truth? Who will take a dare? And how far will each of them go?
But then the game turns deadly. One of them, it seems, would rather kill than tell the truth.
And kill again.
First impressions: Trapped with a killer and nowhere to run always sounds like a fun read, so hopefully Stine doesn’t disappoint here! I wonder if we’ll actually get the scene on the cover if they’re stuck inside the whole time? I like it though, the colours really pop against the snowy background. Not sure about the brunette’s haircut though. Blondie looks like she’s about ready to yeet right off the chairlift, so I wonder what they’re looking at in such horror? Let’s find out!
Recap
Roll call:
April – Our heroine who knows a dirty little secret about one member of the group.
Jenny – April’s best friend who’s dating Ken.
Ken – Jenny’s boyfriend.
Dara – A relatively new friend who invited April, Ken and Jenny to her family’s ski lodge.
Josh – An old friend of Dara’s who the others don’t know.
Tony – A rival Dara’s who’s family owns the lodge with hers.
Carly – Tony’s latest squeeze who has absolutely no relevance to the story.
Our story begins with our heroine, April Leeds [The blonde on the cover!], travelling to her friend Dara’s luxury ski condo in a white stretch limo, courtesy of the host. Also in the limo are best friend Jenny [The brunette on the cover] and Ken, Jenny’s boyfriend, who finish each other’s sentences, which April finds ‘really disgusting’ [She’s not wrong]. April thinks Jenny’s the best-looking girl at Shadyside High [Based on the cover, she’s definitely not], and Ken’s a bit of a dream boat too, but they fight like an old married couple [Will their relationship survive this trip?].
Also in the limo is a cute boy named Josh who the trio haven’t met before. He’s not much of a talker, but explains that his father and Dara’s father are partners at a law firm, so they vacation together a lot. April admits they don’t know Dara that well, since Dara’s family moved to Shadyside only recently, but they sit together in science and Dara asked her to come skiing this weekend, kindly extending the offer to Ken and Jenny, too. Dara’s not in the limo with them, opting to drive up with her parents in the jeep so they’d have a car for the weekend [Surely you’d rather travel in the limo with your friends?].
Dara arrives alone in her jeep just after the limo pulls up to the condo, her parents unable to make it. Dara talks super fast, seemingly without breathing between sentences, and is quite cute, with crimped blonde tangles of hair and a perky nose that April suspects is the result of cosmetic surgery before her move to Shadyside [Isn’t 17 a bit young to be changing your features like that?]. Dara’s excited to see everyone, but evidently forgot Josh was even coming, a reaction that visibly upsets him a little.
After Dara sends the limo back to Shadyside, the gang enters the lodge and discover a boy and girl about April’s age who had clearly just been making out in the dark if the smudged lipstick all over the guy’s face is anything to go by [Hubba hubba!]. Dara recognises the guy, Tony, and demands to know what he’s doing here.
He had a nice smile. But I didn’t really like his face. There was something smug and stuck-up about it. I could see that right away.
And I hate guys with deep clefts in their chin. I don’t know why. I just don’t like it.
[So I guess Josh will be April’s love interest? Note from future: There is no love interest in this book! :O]. Tony introduces his red-headed friend as Carly and it’s quickly revealed Tony and Dara’s families own the lodge together, using it on alternating weeks. Tony insists he thought it was his family’s turn and apologises for getting mixed up, but April can see right through this big fat phony.
Tony confesses his parents don’t actually know he’s here and we learn he and Carly caught a flight then a taxi to get here [That’s a lot of effort], wanting to get away after a tough week [It must be so hard being this rich :(]. Dara wants to know how they’re going to settle who gets to stay and who leaves [I mean, it is your turn with the house, Dara, so you should definitely stay], and April senses Tony might be dangerous when he menacingly approaches Dara, insisting he knows how to settle it [And surprisingly, none of the girls are turned on by his aggression].
Dara doesn’t even flinch but Ken steps up beside her, ready for a fight. Tony starts laughing, announcing the only way to settle it is to share the lodge for the weekend [No, fuck off, Tony] and Dara scolds him for his ‘”sick sense of humor”. Although Dara warns April that Tony is trouble, she grudgingly agrees to share the condo and they determine the sleeping arrangements – Tony and Carly have already decided on separate rooms [Wtf? Why aren’t they sharing one?], Ken and Josh will take the room with the bunk beds, and the three remaining girls get their own room each [What? Why aren’t the couples sleeping together?! It’s not like there’s adults here to stop any sexy times?].
After unpacking, the gang meets back in the living room where Tony and Ken have tended to the fireplace before they eventually play Truth or Dare to help break the ice and get to know each other better. Josh doesn’t like games, but with everyone else willing to play, he quickly agrees. He’s never played Truth or Dare before though, so after a quick explanation of the game [In their version, you hear the question first before deciding to answer it or take the dare. Is that a common version of it? I’ve never played it like that], Dara gets the ball rolling by asking Ken ‘”What is something you did that you’re really ashamed of?”‘
He confesses to pocketing a $10 note he’d seen a little kid drop, but Dara doesn’t want boring stories like that; she wants sexy confessions! She turns her attention to April [Shouldn’t it be Ken’s turn to ask? Lol] and asks what the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her while making out with a boy is. After thinking about it, April admits she’d forgotten she was chewing gum one time and it somehow made its way into the guy’s mouth, who then started to choke on it [Hahahahaha rip. Why are you chewing gum while kissing anyway? Swallow that shit]. April then asks Dara ‘”of all the guys you’ve kissed, who was the worst kisser, and why?”‘:
Slowly she raised her head and turned to the fireplace. A sly smile spread over her face as she gazed at Josh.
She’s going to name Josh! I realized.
Josh’s eyes bulged. A look of sheer panic twisted his features.
Dara wouldn’t do that, I told myself. She couldn’t be that mean—could she?
[Dara’s already been acting like a bitch towards Josh, why would she stop now?]. Josh screams at Dar to shut up before she can say more, but she cruelly insists she’s got to tell the truth, and Josh charges angrily at Dara, holding a fire poker [!!]. But all he does is throw it to the ground and storm off, with Dara chasing after him. She apologises, admitting she wasn’t going to name him and just wanted to tease him, and he sternly tells her not to make fun of him anymore.
He grudgingly comes back to the circle, where Dara decides to that because she’s the host, she can make up whatever rules she wants, and asks April another question:
“April, what secret do you know about someone that you wish you didn’t know?”
I took a deep breath. And then without stopping for a second to think, I answered, “I wish I didn’t know about the girl on Sumner Island.”
[Oooh, juicy]. She immediately regrets it when Jenny asks what she’s talking about, and April glances at Ken, wondering if he realises it was his secret she was talking about [Oooh, is there a cheating scandal that he doesn’t know April knows? Love it].
Before April can answer Jenny’s question, Tony creeps up behind her and slaps her chair, startling her. He then starts flirting with April, right in front of Carly, who just rolls her eyes [Girl, respect yourself], and Dara decides it’s time for him to answer a question. He’d prefer a dare though, so she drags everyone outside in the snow and dares him to climb the roof and bring down the frisbee he’d previously thrown up there. Carly and April protest that it’s too dangerous, since the roof will be super slippery from the snow, but Tony wants to prove he’s a big macho guy and retrieves a ladder from the garage. He starts bragging as soon as he’s up there but then slips as soon as he reaches for the frisbee [Hahahaha good] and slides down the slanted roof.
He catches himself on the gutter, though, and is easily able to drop to the ground unharmed [Damn]. Dara points out that he forgot the frisbee, but he coldly tells her to get it herself because he’s out of the game. April realises the pair really can’t stand each other and hopes it won’t spoil the weekend [I hope it does, hehe!]. She suggests they go for a walk in the woods and leads the way, but the whole time she can’t stop thinking about what she saw on Sumner Island last summer and feels more and more guilty [Surely she saw Ken cheating on Jenny, right? But why wouldn’t she have told Jenny?].
We flash back to that time, when April worked on the island as a mother’s helper. She knew Ken was vacationing there with his family, but hadn’t come across him in her first week there. Then she spotted him on the beach with a very tanned girl that definitely wasn’t Jenny:
I didn’t see her face clearly. I was standing on the rocks at the end of the beach. Too shocked to go any closer.
She wore a tiny blue bikini. I remember that.
She and Ken had spread two big beach towels on the sand. But they both lay on only one of them. All tangled in each other.
Ken was kissing her. A long kiss.
[Naughty, naughty, Ken]. She saw the pair again in town the next day, but they didn’t see her as they stopped in the middle of the town square for a little pash. April never told Jenny because she didn’t want to hurt her [I get that but come on, April, she’s your best friend!], and also never told Ken she’d seen him with another girl. She’d started to tell Jenny a few times as time went on, but chickened out before she actually did it and as the months rolled by, she tried to just forget about what she saw. Instead though, she’s been unable to stop thinking about it and it’s been eating her away.
The gang heads to bed after their walk, but soon April hears noises from the living room. Investigating, she finds Dara pulling on a coat and some gloves. Dara explains she’s going to the woodshed to get more firewood for the morning and declines April’s offer to help since it won’t take long. Tony appears in the hall as April heads back to bed, wondering what’s going on, but returns to his room after April’s explanation. As she steps inside her own room, April wonders why Dara dislikes Tony so much. Did they used to date? [No, it’s probably because he’s such a wanker].
April awakens to a blizzard outside the next day and is super excited to hit the slopes. She eagerly gets ready for the day and heads down to breakfast where everyone is present except Dara and Josh. The gang assume they’re just sleeping in and fix themselves some breakfast, but when the other two still haven’t appeared afterwards, April decides they should wake them up. She and Jenny head to Dara’s room first, but get no answer when they knock and call out to her. Opening the door, they notice her bed hasn’t been slept in and her bags haven’t been unpacked [Idk how suss the bag part is because I wouldn’t bother unpacking completely if I was only going to be there for a few days].
Similarly, Josh’s bed in his and Ken’s room also looks unused and back in the kitchen, Ken reveals he’s a heavy sleeper so has no idea if Josh actually slept there last night [Didn’t you all go to bed at the same time?]. April remembers Dara going to get firewood last night and checks the fireplace area, finding the basket empty [Oh no!]. April fears something is seriously wrong as she explains to the others what she saw last night, and they head outside to look for Dara and Josh. Out in the blizzard, April quickly notices that Dara’s Jeep is gone, with any sign of foot prints or tyre tracks covered up [Maybe Dara and Josh went to get supplies or something? That doesn’t explain the lack of firewood though…].
Back in the kitchen, Tony reveals Dara and Josh used to date and is confident they just went for a drive to talk thinks out, got caught in the blizzard and sought shelter at one of the many ski lodges in the area. April’s super worried because surely Dara would have left a note or at least called, so she thinks they should phone the police. Tony is suspiciously against this idea [He’s clearly the red herring though], admitting he and Carly are here without their parents’ knowledge [You already told us that, bud] and they don’t want to get in trouble. He reassures April that Dara knows every road and back road in the area, so she’s definitely at a neighbouring lodge. But the guy’s face is absolutely dripping with sweat, so April wonders if there’s another reason why he doesn’t want to call the police and realises she’s afraid of him.
She turns away from him just in time to see something tumble off the roof through the window [!!!]. She screams her lungs out and tells her alarmed friends what she saw, who all rush to the window and gaze outside before pointing out it was just a lump of snow that had fallen [Omfg April hahaha]. The poor girl is super embarrassed and explains she’s just so worried about Dara and Josh, but she’s absolutely positive they think she’s ‘some kind of mental case’.
To pass the time, Tony and Carly make out in the kitchen under the guise of making popcorn while April, Ken and Jenny play gin rummy with a deck of cards they find, but it’s super boring:
Jenny yawned.
“Want to do something else?” I asked.
“Anything but Truth or Dare,” Ken snapped. He flashed me a meaningful glance.
So he did figure out what I meant last night! I realized. Ken knows that I know about the girl on Sumner Island.
[I mean it’s not like you were very cryptic with your words, April. He’d be an idiot not to have realised]. They’re about to turn on the radio for some fully sick tunez when they hear knocking at the back door. Hoping it’s Dara and Josh, they rush to the kitchen where Tony and Carly are already looking outside. But weirdly, there’s no-one there despite them all hearing the knocking. Ken accuses Tony of pranking them, but he denies it and April, Ken and Jenny head back to the living room. The knocking happens again, and once again there’s no-one at the door when they rush to the kitchen.
When the knocking starts up a third time, April discovers it’s the door of the ski locker on the porch banging in the wind. Ken ventures outside to close it, joined by April who wants some nice cold fresh air, and as they make their way through the snow storm, Ken feels like they’re in a snow globe. And then, completely unprompted, he proceeds to mansplain to April what a snow globe is – ‘”You know. The glass balls you shake and the snow floats in every direction.”‘ [I get that Stine wanted to make sure readers knew what he was talking about, but come on. Who doesn’t know what a fkn snow globe is?].
Just as they finally reach the locker, Dara’s lifeless, frozen corpse tumbles out [!!!]. Ken bends down to investigate the body, revealing a hatchet buried between her shoulder blades, and April vomits into the snow before they head back inside and break the news to the others. April insists they have to call the police now and after a meaningful glance at Carly, Tony moves to the phone. It’s no use though, because the blizzard has stuffed the phone lines and there’s no dial tone.
April suddenly remembers they still haven’t found Josh yet and suspects they’ll find his corpse somewhere too, but Tony decides Josh is the murderer [Nope, he’s a red herring just like you, Tony]. Ken tries the phone again but it’s still out [It’s been like two minutes and the storm is still raging, why would it be working again?], so they decide to search the room Josh and Ken shared for clues, deciding that his belongings being gone will apparently prove he killed Dara and drove away [Sounds like concrete evidence to me, gang! Not]. Josh’s bag is still in the room and the top bunk clearly hasn’t been slept in, so April and Ken suspect he’s been murdered too.
They head to Dara’s room to search for some kind of clue, where April quickly finds a note and confidently declares to the rest of the group ‘”I know who Killed Dara.”‘ [I bet you don’t, hun!]. It’s a handwritten note from Josh written in red pen and admitting he made a mistake thinking Dara was worth caring about after she’d humiliated him last night. In the note, he claims he wants to talk to her one last time and demands she meets him at midnight, alone [The note doesn’t say where to meet him though. Also, what’s the point of the note? Literally just pull her aside and say everything to her face?].
Jenny freaks out, suspecting Josh will remember he wrote the note and come back to kill the rest of them for reading it [It’ll be five against one, darl, I don’t think so], and Tony remembers Dara’s father used to keep a pistol in the house, suggesting they can use it for protection. He goes off in search of it, while April comforts Jenny, hoping Tony won’t find a gun since she still doesn’t exactly trust him.
In bed that night, April struggles to fall asleep, unable to relax after the day she’s had [If they’re all so scared, why are they all still sleeping in separate bedrooms?]. Just as she’s finally about to drift off, she hears floorboards creaking in the living room and realises Josh has returned to kill the rest of them. She arms herself with a ski pole and sneaks out into the hall, stopping just outside the lounge room. And then someone grabs her [!!!!!!].
It’s just Tony, who’d also heard noises and was investigating, but then he’d heard April’s footsteps and tackled her thinking it was Josh [Did he hear the same noises in the living room that April did, or did he hear something, then she heard him, then he heard her?]. April’s not quite buying his story and for some reason chooses now to ask if he dated Dara. He bitterly admits it but says ‘”No one ever went out with Dara for very long”‘. April’s parched all of a sudden so he follows her to the kitchen for a drink, reassuring her the storm will stop and the phones will be back up tomorrow, and then notices something at the back door:
I followed his gaze. He was staring at the glass door.
I turned to the door. It took me a few seconds to recognise what I was seeing.
Then my hands jerked up to the sides of my face, and I started to scream.
Josh’s frozen body. Snow-covered. Wide-eyed.
Josh’s frozen body was pressed against the glass.
Her screams bring Carly, Jenny and Ken rushing to the kitchen and April quickly realises Josh isn’t dead when he starts banging on the glass, trying to get in. Even though they think he’s a murderer, no-one protests when Tony quickly unlocks the door and lets him in [He’s clearly not the murderer, but they suspect he is, so why would they let him in?! Idiots]. He’s shivering and shaking and can barely string a sentence together as Tony starts interrogating him. Carly makes everyone coffee while the gang demands to know why Josh killed Dara, but he has no idea what they’re talking about. Carly fetches the note and upon reading it, Josh reveals ‘”It’s a total lie”‘ – that’s not his handwriting and he didn’t write this [!!!].
Jenny accuses him of lying [Don’t you know a red herring when you see one, Jenny?! At this stage, Jenny, Ken and Carly are the only realistic suspects, but Carly doesn’t know these people and I can’t think of a motive for Jenny, which leaves us with Ken. We know he’s dodgy from the whole cheating thing, but not sure why he’d kill Dara. Actually, April and Dara are both blondes, is it possible he accidentally killed the wrong girl?], and although Josh admits stealing the Jeep and driving away looks bad, he insists he didn’t write the note or kill Dara. April’s a nice gal and encourages them all to hear him out, so Josh reveals he was so angry at Dara last night after she made fun of him that he wanted to get back at her [Not by killing her though].
He ultimately settled on stealing the Jeep to strand her here, but didn’t get far in the snow because he kept sliding off the road. Eventually he slid into a deep drift and couldn’t get out of it. With the gas tank almost empty, he’d turned the engine off, which he’d kept on for the heater, and waited for a car or truck to come by. The road was completely empty though and after a few hours, he just kept walking until he arrived back at the house. April believes his story [Me too], but realises it can only mean one thing – ‘Someone else murdered Dara. Someone in this room.’ [I’m looking at you, Ken!]
The next morning, the phone’s still dead and the blizzard’s still going, and April’s cornered in the hall by Ken as she heads to the kitchen. He wants to have a chat at some point about what she said the other night. Sumner Island is the last thing on April’s mind at the moment and Ken’s the last person she wants to speak to about it, so tells him ‘”Maybe later.”‘
They then join Tony and Carly in the kitchen, but April’s not feeling very social and heads back to her room where she finds Josh frantically searching through her things. He’s looking for the red pen that had written the note to Dara, framing him, and although he declares he’ll be searching everyone’s rooms for it, April’s offended he’s even considering her as the killer [But it’s perfectly fine for her to believe he’s the killer? Come on, April] and kicks him out.
Finding Josh pawing through her things is the last straw for April, who decides she has to get out of the house and seek help despite the snow storm outside. She sneaks into the living room and pulls on her boots, but can’t find her parka among the pile of coats. They’d all been wearing each other’s coats when they were outside yesterday looking for Dara and Josh [Why wouldn’t you just put your own coat on though? Lol weird], and they’d been thrown down haphazardly when they came back inside [OK, I bet Dara was wearing April’s parka when she was murdered, probably by Ken, who thought he was killing April to keep her quiet about the Sumner Island girl! But is that too obvious? Maybe Jenny is our bad guy, but I can’t figure out a motive for her]. And then April suddenly realises where she saw her coat last – on Dara’s frozen corpse [How did she not recognise Dara was wearing her coat when she saw her the night she went outside, or when she found the body…].
Without pulling on a different coat, April ventures outside to the garage, where they’d stored Dara’s body, and finds that she’s remembering correctly. And then April has another realisation – the murderer had meant to kill her, not Dara [I already figured that out, April, catch up!].
She rushes back inside and snatches a random coat from the pile before venturing out into the snow again, determined to keep walking until she finds help. She struggles against the strong wind to zip up the red oversized coat she scored, which she determines to be Ken’s due to his bulky figure, and continues downhill toward the road. It doesn’t take long for April’s nose and ears to go numb, and she scolds herself at how stupid she was to leave without more layers on. Burying her hands in the pockets of the jacket, April’s hand closes around a thin object. As she pulls it out to investigate, we get possibly one of the most drawn out descriptions of an object I’ve ever read:
A pen. A ballpoint pen.
A red plastic ballpoint pen.
I checked the tip. Red.
Red ink.
[Stine really needed 17 words to tell us it’s a red pen…]. April stops dead in her tracks as she realises the pen, the ballpoint pen, the red plastic ballpoint pen, the red plastic ballpoint pen with a red tip, the red plastic ballpoint pen with a red tip and red ink that she’s holding in her hands is the one that wrote the note to Dara, which means Ken is the killer [OK but we’re still, like, 35 pages from the end which is way too soon for the bad guy reveal, so Ken can’t be the killer. Maybe Jenny killed Dara thinking it was April. Maybe Jenny knew about the Sumner Island girl and wanted revenge on her best friend for not telling her? That definitely sounds like a Shadyside motive! Or maybe Jenny just didn’t want the truth getting out because of the embarrassment it would cause her?].
As she continues on her journey, April hears snow crunching behind her and and is quickly tackled by Ken. Scrambling to her feet, April demands to know why he followed her, and he explains Jenny saw her leaving and made him come get her to bring her back. April just knows he’s lying and wants to kill her [Nope, Jenny does. Or possibly Carly, but she’s such a nothing character I don’t know how Stine would shoehorn that in] but decides to play along for now and follows him back to the house [If Ken is the bad guy, like she suspects, wouldn’t it make sense for him to leave her out in the snow? They both know she’d probably get frostbite and/or freeze before she found help].
As they head back, April decides she’ll put on warmer clothes and warn Jenny about Ken, and the two of them can escape together [She doesn’t want to let Jenny down again after not telling her about the other girl, but apparently she’s more than happy to leave the other three behind with who she thinks is a murderer hahaha]. Ken chooses now to speak to April about Sumner Island and he remains totally stone-faced as April blurts out that she saw him with that girl. He grabs her, demanding to know if she’s told Jenny, and April explains that she hasn’t been able to do it, despite wanting to. He then moves closer to April, apologising, but April starts back up the hill toward the ski lodge as the snow finally begins to stop.
As soon as they’re inside, Ken wants to talk with April some more, but Tony quickly appears and drags Ken away to help get some firewood. April finds Jenny with Carly and pulls her into the kitchen for a private chat, explaining she’s got a lot to tell her but they have to get away first. She reckons they’ll be able to ski into town now that it’s stopped snowing, and Jenny quickly agrees to go with her [Oh my god, Jenny’s definitely the bad guy! How could I have been so naive to think Ken was the bad guy, when he was the most obvious red herring of all!].
After dressing in more layers, April and Jenny sneak out the back and retrieve their skis before setting off down the hill. At the bottom of the slope, they look back up and notice the ski lift has started up again, and there’s also a worker not too far from them at the bottom of the lift! The girls rush over and explain they need the police, and the old man informs them there’s a phone in the patrol station up top. Thanking him, the girls hitch a ride on the next chair up.
We were about a third of the way up the hill when Jenny turned to me. Her chin quivered and her mouth twisted into an ugly sneer.
“I’m really sorry, April,” she said in a strange, tense voice.
“What do you mean?” I didn’t understand at first.
“I’m really sorry,” she repeated. “But what choice do I have?” Before I could reply, Jenny pushed up to safety bar.
Then she brought both hands up behind me—and shoved with all her strength.
[I’m still mad she evaded my suspicion for so long. Fkn Jenny. Also I’m glad the cover scene is depicted in the book. I was a bit worried there!]. April manages to hold onto the chair’s side to stop herself from falling, and the chairlift sways and tilts as the girls wrestle with each other. When April questions why she’s doing this, Jenny reveals that she caught April’s clue in the Truth or Dare game, which Jenny believes was a signal to her:
She raised her hands to my shoulders, gripped me tightly, but didn’t push. “You were letting me know you knew about the girl—weren’t you!”
I started to reply. But Jenny didn’t give me a chance.
“You were telling me you knew!” She insisted. “Well, I didn’t mean to kill that girl, April! I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”
[OK I was not expecting that little reveal!]. Through the standard bad guy monologue, Jenny reveals that she found out about Barbara, the girl on Sumner Island, but Ken had promised her it was over. He was lying, which Jenny quickly figured out when he kept disappearing to visit Barbara in her hometown of Foster Mill, so Jenny paid her a little visit too. She doesn’t know what happened, admitting she just ‘”went crazy or something”‘, but the two girls had fought and then Barbara was dead.
Jenny’s been so scared that she’d be caught ever since, and her fears didn’t subside when the police admitted defeat and ‘”Barbara’s murder went unsolved”‘. And then in Truth or Dare, her worst nightmare came true, and declares Dara’s death was April’s fault, since Jenny thought she was killing her instead. She admits to writing the note to frame Josh and planting the pen in Ken’s jacket pocket before explaining that as the only one who knows she killed Barbara, April now has to die. April insists she had no idea about Barbara’s death, but it’s too late for that as Jenny finally shoves her off the chairlift [!!!!].
Luckily for her, they’re practically at the top of the hill by now, so April’s completely uninjured as she falls face first into the snow, her skis unsnapping as she does so [Does that mean they’ve come off her feet? I’ve never been skiing idk how they work hahaha]. As she attempts to get up she turns in time to see Jenny leaping from the chairlift and sliding towards her on her skis, her ski pole aimed at April’s throat.
She misses, jabs again, but April’s able to avoid being impaled. Jenny starts swinging the pole instead, and April’s fear soon turns to anger as she demands Jenny drop the pole right this second. She moves towards Jenny, who backs up several steps as April tries to calm her down, promising they’ll get her help. Eventually, Jenny backs up the hill high enough for one of the moving chairs to knock her in the back of the head.
April leaps forward and tackles her to the snow as a dazed Jenny starts babbling about no-one knowing her secret. A shadow sweeps over the pair and April looks up to see Ken leaping off the chairlift and rushing over to them. As they pull Jenny to her feet, Ken convinces our bad guy to return to the house with them so they can get her help. Still stunned from the head knock, Jenny agrees before continuing with her ramblings about no-one knowing her secret.
Ken explains to April that he’d found the red pen [He’s talking about the red plastic ballpoint pen with red ink in case you forgot] in his jacket pocket and after taking a closer look at the note, he recognised Jenny’s handwriting [Couldn’t save everyone the trouble and recognise it when the note was discovered, Ken?]. He saw them leaving and decided to follow, and April now confirms his assumption that Jenny murdered Dara.
As two ski patrolmen approach the trio, the book ends with one last hilarious quip:
“The Truth or Dare game,” I told Ken sadly. “It revealed more truth than any of us realized.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, thinking about it for a long time. “Next time, April, take the dare,” he advised.
“Next time,” I told him, “maybe we should stick to Trivial Pursuit.”
[Lol, good one guys…]
Final thoughts
This one was kind of middle-of-the-road for me; I didn’t love it, but didn’t hate it either. I liked April, but the other characters could have been fleshed out more, particularly Jenny and Ken, while Carly could have just been axed altogether – she wasn’t even a red herring! Dara was fun so it’s a shame she died so early, and the book could have benefitted from some more death, but it totally makes sense why no-one else died.
I do have to give it props, since I didn’t correctly guess the bad guy until right before they were revealed. God knows why I didn’t see it coming much sooner; maybe I’m having an off day! I’m also glad there was a proper reason Jenny was trying to kill April that didn’t involve her choosing her boyfriend over her best friend – protecting the fact you murdered someone is a much better reason to kill your bestie than simply finding out she knew about your cheating boyfriend, which was what I was expecting.
The blurb 100% made it sound better than it actually was, but like I said, it’s not a terrible book, especially if you want something easy to follow.
55 red plastic ballpoint pens out of 88.
