That Weekend

Gr 9 Up–When Claire’s boyfriend wanders off with another girl days before prom, Claire decides to ditch the dance and join a secret road trip with her two best friends. Claire is excited for a weekend getaway and determined to make sure that her BFF, Kat, doesn’t learn about her own secret feelings for Kat’s boyfriend, Jesse. But Claire’s priorities change when she finds herself dazed, confused, and bleeding on the side of a mountain. She has no idea how she got there—and no memory of the last 36 hours. Her friends are nowhere to be found. Claire knows that the answer to their disappearance is buried somewhere in her subconscious—but she isn’t sure she will like what she discovers. This is a sometimes sleepy thriller that tosses in a few unsuspected plot twists all the way to the very end. Claire carries the novel, with her mental anguish and self-doubt keeping readers invested. This does mean that when Claire falters, the plot does too—if she is spiraling down a social media rabbit hole, readers are dragged along for pages at a time. While this sometimes slows the forward momentum, her journey provides room for plenty of satisfying character development. Almost all characters are coded as white except Jesse (Mexican and Italian American) and a few minor characters.