Books

The Famous Five meets We Were Liars as five teens spend a summer getting revenge on the people who have wronged them – with tragic consequences.

When she was a child, 16-year-old Ella Newhall used to be in a gang calling themselves ‘The Fearless Five.’ Together with her friends Max, Corey, Fallon and Zane, the group would hang out together every summer, riding their bikes, sailing out to the island in the bay, having picnics on the summit of Brynstan Hill and telling spooky stories under the watchful gaze of Jessica, Max’s older sister. They were happy kids and it was a happy time. Until the day Jessica was knocked down and killed by a speeding bus. And all their summers came to a shuddering halt.

Four years later, the Fearless Five find themselves in very different places. Max is a lazy daddy’s boy, permanently reliant on drugs; Corey is a depressed loner, unnaturally obsessed with death; Fallon is eight-months pregnant after a one-night stand while Zane is the town thug. And as for Ella, or ‘Volcano Girl’ as she is known in the local papers, she is on track for Olympic superstardom with her running, if she could just get her self-harm under control. But what unites all of them is a deep-seated need for retribution.

Inspired by old horror stories Jessica used to tell them, the gang finds themselves joining forces to exact revenge on those who have made their lives a misery. But revenge, as they come to learn, is a gun loaded with both pleasure and pain – the endgame being that the Fearless Five will become Four.