The Initial Insult

Tress Montor’s family used to mean something—until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. The entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken, one-eyed grandfather at what locals refer to as the “White Trash Zoo.”

Felicity Turnado has it all: looks, money, and a secret. One misstep could send her tumbling from the top of the social ladder, and she’s worked hard to make everyone forget that she was with the Montors the night they disappeared. Felicity has buried what she knows so deeply that she can’t even remember what it is . . . only that she can’t look at Tress without feeling shame and guilt.

But Tress has a plan. A Halloween costume party at an abandoned house provides the ideal situation for Tress to pry the truth from Felicity—brick by brick—as she slowly seals her former best friend into a coal chute. Tress will have her answers—or settle for revenge.

* A Junior Library Guild Selection * Texas Tayshas Reading List of the Year * A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults & Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Book of the Year *

• Former Best Friends: Tress is an outcast living at a “White Trash Zoo.” Felicity is the popular girl holding the key to the past. Their friendship is long dead, but the secrets aren’t.
• Edgar Allan Poe Inspired: In a chilling nod to “The Cask of Amontillado,” Tress plans to get her answers by sealing Felicity into a coal chute, brick by brick.
• Alternating Points of View: Unravel the mystery through the eyes of Tress, hell-bent on revenge, and Felicity, who can’t remember the very truth Tress is trying to unearth.
• Unreliable Narrator: Felicity was the only witness to the disappearance of Tress's parents, but she's buried the memory so deep that even she doesn't know what really happened that night.
• Small Town Mystery: In Amontillado, everyone has a history and something to hide. Seven years after the Montors vanished without a trace, the truth is about to be violently unearthed.