“All you had to do was smile and wear the right clothes, and everyone would think you were special.”

From Joelle Charbonneau’s Time Bomb.

During one of the last few days of summer, six students head to their high school; Frankie: the varsity quarterback, Rashid: the Muslim boy trying to not stand out, Diana: the Senator’s perfect daughter, Z: the rebel who just lost his mother, Cas: the new girl who no one notices, and Tad: the gay football player struggling to reconnect with a summer romance.  The students have nothing in common except that each of them went to school with a bag and secret intentions.  The six are scattered throughout the school with other students and faculty members when a series of bomb detonations in the building leave them all trapped and desperate to survive.  Some of the kids are able to escape from the rooms they were trapped in, but subsequent blasts keep them all trapped inside the crumbling inferno that their school has become.  Injured, scared, and running out of time, the six band together in an attempt to wait out the fires and collapses until help can arrive, but the threat of more bombs keeps firefighters from entering the building.  When news reaches the teens trapped inside that there is another bomb in the building along with the bomber, the six survivors and their barely-holding-it-together-trust is quickly put to the test as each one tries to figure out who among them is the bomber and how to get out before the final bomb detonates.

This nail-biting thriller is a captivating read from the first page to final who’s-the-bomber revelation.  Charbonneau’s writing style allows her to create a complex story that keeps reader’s on the edge of their seat, gaining new information in each chapter, but keeping the whole picture hidden until the very end.  Time Bomb is a thoroughly enjoyable read that uses six different narrators to tell one riveting page-turner that is almost impossible to put down!