Five Voices by Tamara Moss

Title: Five Voices

Author: Tamara Moss

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 1^st September 2026

Format: Paperback

Pages: 480

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: Five characters. Four suspects. All of them are hiding secrets. None of them can be trusted. A thrilling and addictive YA murder mystery from a New York Times bestselling Australian author, and perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying, We Were Liars, and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

HE MESSED WITH THEM ALL. SOMEONE GOT REVENGE.

Five Voices is the highly popular podcast founded by five friends – Rosie, William, Simone, Zac, and Ocean – who debate contentious issues while playing classic board games. Until one night when, an hour after a huge argument during a recording session of the podcast, William is found dead. Everyone claims innocence, but something doesn’t add up … somebody must be lying.

Rosie was on the phone with William minutes before he fell to his death from his apartment balcony. He was on the brink of telling her a secret about one of their co-hosts, and his last words imply they were interrupted by the very person he was about to expose.

As Rosie searches for answers, she realises their world isn’t as black and white as she’d believed, and that sometimes doing the right thing isn’t as easy as it sounds. Especially when it comes to solving your best friend’s murder.

From the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Escape Game comes this fantastic, fast-paced, high-stakes YA that will have readers second-guessing and on the edge of their seats till the very last page.


Perfect for YA readers who love:
– A twisty plot, high stakes and secrets
– A page-turning murder mystery within a tight-knit friendship group
– YA novels by E Lockhart, Holly Jackson, Karen McManus and Marissa Meyer

~*~

Rosie and her four friends, William, Simone, Zac and Ocean have been running their own podcast for three years. Five Voices is a popular podcast, where the hosts, who go by pseudonyms, play games whilst debating a range of topics that can end in arguments. They talk about contentious issues, which can lead to arguments and that has led to a large fan base who think they know them. Recently though, someone has been doxxing them, outing the hosts and leading to online abuse.

Yet things start going wrong at a party for the podcast, and during a recording when there is a massive argument, and one hour later, William is dead. Rosie was the last person to speak to him. In fact, she had been talking to him minutes before he went over the balcony. But they are all suspects. Zac, Simone, Ocean…everyone. So whose secret was William about to expose? Did they kill him because of that, or is there another reason?

Dig deeper, and there are signs that something more was going on with everyone, from broken families to illnesses and stress about exams, and a few other things that start to make things a bit more complicated.  It’s not straightforward, so the chapters go back and forth between the characters, as well as going back to the party before William’s death. These instances and changes are signposted, but it is still a good idea to pay attention to the changes, because it can catch you off at first. That said, it worked really well to build tension and develop the story, showing that things were much more complicated than we are first led to believe.

There’s some heavy stuff about mental health and related issues threaded throughout, highlighting that anyone or any age can face challenges, and that it’s not always going to be the same for everyone. It also shapes how everything eventually works out, because the complexities and different threads of what people knew, what they thought they knew and what people want others to know shape the novel and what we as readers are told, and how we understand this diverse group of friends.

Everyone in this novel has their own identity, their own background and their own struggles and tragedy that have shaped who they are, and how they cope with things that happen, or how they cling to people. There is a sense that Simone, Zac, Ocean and Rosie were often being kept in the dark about a lot of things, and that they didn’t always see what was going on in front of them or with each other. I think this gave the novel its emotional gravitas, as it showed that there are lots of ways to help people, and lots of ways people respond to bad things happening in their lives.

The one thing we know is going to be part of the novel is Rosie’s ongoing internal debate over seeing the mother who abandoned her when she was a baby. I got the sense that she was the main character, the one who was trying to hold the group together, but who also had to navigate her own moral compass and pressure to see someone she had never met. I did love that these characters all had different goals that for the most part, didn’t change throughout the novel. Things evolved, and we got to see what drove characters to certain things. It sensitively balanced hope, grief, and wanting to give up with the desire to uncover the truth, know what happened and wanting to be there when it mattered.

It’s a cleverly plotted novel, that reveals elements of human nature that show what happens to people under pressure or how people try to keep things certain ways. It doesn’t justify things, because there never is any reason for pulling the wool over people’s eyes, or making them only see one way of doing things. Nor does it justify bullying or stalking. Things that happen have real world consequences, and that sometimes, it takes something huge before we notice.

The bulk of the novel is about the murder and who could have done it, with a few plot twists that take us off in different directions, and show that there are lots of motives to consider, yet there is only one that will be the driving force behind everything. It’s tightly plotted, compelling and an intriguing examination of human nature and what happens when we’re preoccupied. When we’re faced with tragedy and numerous choices that can alter someone’s life.

It’s full of twists and turns, that shape the unexpected moments of the novel and story. It has a multitude of layers that can provoke conversations. The podcast transcripts peppered throughout highlight the controversial topics the characters talked about, and I did get the sense that there was one who appeared to play devil’s advocate yet was questioning if they really held those beliefs by the end of the book.

It may be a young adult novel, that deals with heavy themes, so it’s probably best suited for older young adult readers, like sixteen and over. It does get dark at times, and these are seventeen and eighteen year olds embarking on their life after high school, far from their hometown. All in all, I felt this was a compelling book and I think those who enjoy this sort of thing will love this book.