If You Tell Anyone, You’re Next by Jack Heath

Title: If You Tell Anyone, You’re Next

Author: Jack Heath

Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st October 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: An exclusive group chat. A deadly challenge. How far would you go to join? Jayden Jones is missing. Everyone thinks he ran away. His best friend, Zoe Gale, knows they’re wrong. Zoe’s search leads her to the Seventeen—a secret group chat, used by anonymous teens to blackmail the powerless. To join, you have to put on a mask and record yourself completing a challenge. The challenges are always illegal. Sometimes dangerous. Maybe deadly. Who are the Seventeen? What have they done to Jayden? And what will they do to silence Zoe? A rollercoaster of suspense and twists from the author of the Liars series.

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Jayden Jones has been missing since Friday – yet the police in Burniglen don’t seem very concerned. In fact, another accident has taken most of their resources, and Zoe Gale, Jayden’s only friend, has decided to look into his disappearance. As she delves further into finding out what happened, she uncovers a secret group chat called The 17. It’s used by teens anonymously to complete a challenge to be admitted into a secret society. Or so it seems. The challenges are often illegal, dangerous and can be deadly – but how far will some people go for acceptance, and as Zoe finds herself investigating, the group seeks to silence her. And they will stop at nothing to do so – to the point Zoe doesn’t know who she can trust.

Wow – what a book. Jack Heath has delivered again, and this time, nobody is safe. Mistrust breeds in this book, because there are things that aren’t talked about, and a sense that you can’t trust anyone – that everyone is involved and will use things against you. How does Zoe know that Christian isn’t behind it all? That Sarah may know more than she lets on, and is the most popular girl in school behind it all? Only Niamh is able to help where she can. School can be a backstabbing place, filled with rumours and bullying, and groups that want to be separate from everyone else. In this book though, Jack Heath has taken this to the next level. He has created a world of crime and secret societies, where hearts pound with fear and worry, and where everyone is a suspect. Even Zoe, who just wants to find out what happened to Jayden and why and is willing to do whatever she can to do so – even if it means breaking a few laws along the way. Though she thinks it’s nothing compared to what she has heard The 17 get up to so they can prove themselves to whoever the leader of the group is.

Because danger lurks around every corner in this book, I was on the edge of my seat with this thriller, and it has all of Jack Heath’s trademark tensions but targeted to a young adult readership, so not quite as over the top as his adult novels, but nonetheless, well on the way to those books. I felt this book was like a bridge between the Minutes of Danger series and his adult books, and starting with Stunt Kid, I think he’ll have readers growing up with his books – that sounds like a lot of fun to me for an author, and having read across each of his target readerships, I can see how the stories get more dangerous and more intense. This one was definitely one I kept reading – I had to find out who was behind it all and Jack knows how to throw red herrings around and deflect so the reveal at the end isn’t too obvious – I didn’t see part of this one coming, though part of me did have lots of questions about how certain aspects of the case hadn’t come about – I’ll let readers find that out for themselves though.

I found this book intriguing and it is one that will make you wonder what people are capable of and the lengths they will go to for power and influence, and to get what they want out of life. It also shows that there will be people out there who will show you what they want you to see and keep what they are really like a secret – something that is unsettling and makes you doubt what you know about people sometimes. It is one that will have readers thinking twice about secret groups and how people purport to be – one where I think questions will be raised for some readers about the people they know and how they act, or don’t act. It does question the instances of what it means to be genuine and what it means to be a friend – and in the end, it can make readers reassess what they do and who they spend time with. Maybe. All in all, an intriguing and creepy read from Jack that raises questions about the human condition with a satisfying and realistic ending in relation to the justice system and how the world works.