3 Page-Turning Thrillers

"When did kids get to be so quiet?" Jackie Reed wonders late at night at home, her two sons in their respective rooms, plugged into their devices. "They made it so you couldn't know them anymore. They made it so you couldn't help." Smartphones and social media play a central role in this gripping thriller, which begins with a Facebook-posted suicide note left by Wade, Jackie's 17-year-old son, and then flashes back five days to the incident that started it all: a hit-and-run that takes the life of a local high school football hero. Although police Officer Pearl Maze is determined to follow the evidence, the community takes to social media to indict outsider Wade. Stuck in the middle is Wade's adolescent brother, Connor, who finds himself ostracized at school and unsure whom to trust. Gaylin's novel is at its most frightening when it reminds us of the dangers of mob mentality in the age of Instagram and Snapchat. As the evidence against Wade piles up, Jackie must become a detective in her own home, searching for something to exonerate her son–and it might just be technology, in the end, that saves him.