FIRST WE WERE IV is my third book (!), and though I’m always giddy over a new release, screaming from the rooftops that it’s my favorite project yet), FWWIV is special to me. It’s my rebel heart.

Rebellion, a secret society, best friends, revenge, invention, and love braid together in FWWIV’s plot and race to leave their mark on the reader. FWWIV’s four protagonists – Izzie, Viv, Graham, and Harry – learn all too well that with rebellion comes consequences, some more gut-wrenching than others.

My first two novels, THE CREEPING and THE TELLING, were standalone YA thrillers, of the whodunit variety. Twisty crimes were committed and heroines hunted down villains. Romance, friendship, mystery, and thrills abounded. FIRST WE WERE IV is more in the vein of WE WERE LIARS or a take on PRETTY LITTLE LIARS meets FIGHT CLUB. They’re not hunting a monster, they create one.

FWWIV follows four best friends – Izzie, Viv, Harry, and Graham – who invent a secret society, the Order of IV. The rules: Never lie, never tell, and always love each other. They make a pledge and perform a ritual under the blood moon. They play vigilante-pranks on their seaside town, stunts that punk everyone but ultimately improve things.

Events take a dangerous turn when other teens at school want in. Others have appetites for giving the figurative finger to authority. And our four heroes have secrets and grudges. What starts for fun, morphs into a rebellion. The Order of IV takes on a broken and unjust world. They set out to teach their small town that there are consequences for allowing the death of a runaway teenage girl to go unsolved.

Opening with the arrival of the police, evidence of an accident or murder, and the statement “First we were four. Now we are three,” the story jumps back to relate how their secret society ratchets dangerously out of control, leaving the mystery of what happens to one of them (and to which one) to pull readers through the book. FWWIV doesn’t hide from its consequences, it lays them up front, as the book’s central mystery.

Without consequences and stakes in thrillers and mysteries, there’d be no tension. And although writing the conclusion to FIRST WE WERE IV was heartbreaking – these characters came alive for me – to be true to their rebellion, the impact of it, there needed to be consequences, good and bad. I owed them that. They earned them. My hope is that readers will judge for themselves if the risks Izzie, Viv, Graham, and Harry took were worth the price they paid.

The title for my upcoming book, First We Were IV, came to me almost as soon as the first impulse of “I want to write a book about four best friends who start a secret society to play vigilante-pranks, but it ratchets way out of control and twists into a weapon of revenge, costing all of them something, and one of them everything” did. A chaotic initial spark, I know.

This title was with me from the beginning and I never considered another because “First We Were IV” cuts right to the bone of what the story is. The title helped to shape the book as I wrote. It evokes the book’s twisty, mysterious atmosphere. It’s also the first thing people ask about the book—what’s up with the title? What does it mean? Why use a Roman numeral?

The title hints at one of the book’s core mysteries. Four best friends—Izzie, Viv, Graham, and Harry—invent a secret society. Only three survive it. FWWIV begins with the end of their story. The aftermath. It begins with broken hearts and broken rules. It begins with a dead body.

I chose to use the Roman numeral IV for the same reason Viv, one of our heroines, tells the group they should name their secret society the Order of IV rather than the Order of Four—way more badass.

Check out the description for First We Were IV and start reading the extended excerpt (available until July 17)!

A group of friends start a secret society in this out-of-control thriller from the author of The Telling and The Creeping that examines the all-consuming love of lifelong friendship—and what someone is capable of when they’re afraid of losing it.

Izzie loves nothing more than her three best friends, Viv, Graham, and Harry, and the bond the four of them share. And she’s terrified of their friendship falling apart next year when they go off to college. To bind them together, she decides to create that will belong only to them, a special thing that they’ll always share between the four of them. And so they dream up the Order of IV, a secret society devoted to mischief that rights wrongs and pays back debts. At first, it works like a charm—but when the Order of IV’s escapades get recognition beyond their wildest expectations, other people start wanting in. And soon, what started as a game of friendship is spiraling into something dangerous and beyond their control—and before it’s over, they’ll pay the ultimate sacrifice.