From the author of Let's Talk About Love and If It Makes You Happy, this exuberant YA novel follows six teens locked together in a mansion, contending for a life-changing cash prize in a competition run by a reclusive heiress.
Everyone thinks they know Jewel Van Hanen. Heiress turned actress turned social media darling who created the massively popular video-sharing app, Golden Rule.
After mysteriously disappearing for a year, Jewel makes her dramatic return with an announcement: she has chosen a few lucky Golden Rule users to spend an unforgettable weekend at her private estate. But once they arrive, Jewel ingeniously flips the script: the guests are now players in an elaborate estate-wide game. And she's tailored every challenge and obstacle to test whether they have what it takes to win—at any cost.
Told from the perspective of three dazzling players—Nicole: the new queen of Golden Rule; Luna: Jewel's biggest fan; and Stella: a brilliant outsider—this novel will charm its way into your heart and keep you guessing how it all ends because money isn't the only thing at stake.
Release date:
June 8, 2021
Publisher:
Feiwel & Friends
Print pages:
336
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
“When the world burns, at least I’ll die in comfort.”
—JEWEL VAN HANEN
SILENTSTAR
After school, Luna sat alone under her favorite tree on the front lawn, eating the rest of her lunch while waiting for her ride home.
And then she started choking.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping on land. She blinked in disbelief, eyes watering as she pulled at her collar. Air could get in, whistling past the lump of mush bulging in her throat, and luckily, it was just enough to keep her alive. She took a final breath, clenched her core muscles, pushed on her diaphragm, and coughed like her life depended on it. Because it did. She spit the food out into a napkin and collapsed on the grass next to her phone.
Really, eating and reading were two activities that Luna had no business doing at the same time. The girl simply was not built for that kind of multitasking. But in her defense? The gaspworthy news was probably worth dying for.
Jewel Van Hanen had finally returned to Golden Rule.
Everyone had speculated and wondered, but Luna believed.
She took a moment to relish the feeling of breathing. The crisp fading-winter air smelled like pine needles and felt just as sharp in her lungs. Sunlight streamed through the leaves, making shadows on her hands. The wind fluttered softly through her hair. She had half a mind to make a new video for Golden Rule and title it something like Resurrection in Green in honor of not choking to death and Jewel’s return.
Videos on Golden Rule were technically called diary entries, and Luna’s always kept her face in frame—the app wouldn’t record otherwise—but she never spoke. Her silence got filled by the roaring wind on blustering days, the panging echoes of emptiness when her sister left her alone on weekends, the cacophony of her loud classmates, and the like. Crickets at the park were her costars on good days, as were the sounds of speeding cars while she stood on a bridge on bad days.
True to her screen name, Luna was the SilentStar of Golden Rule and one of the Founders of the Goldspiracy Forums.
A steady thrum of too much bass peeled around the corner. Luna rolled over, smiling as she packed up her stuff, and ran for the sidewalk.
Alex always drove like a getaway driver fleeing the scene of a bank heist—with a car full of money, riding the hubristic high of making it out alive. He’d never been late, never missed a day, and never slowed down in front of her school, choosing instead to come to a tire-screeching halt. Inside the car, Luna immediately turned back to her phone. The forum had gone feral with excitement when Jewel had announced Golden Weekend X—the tenth time she would host the event. And as promised, she had followed three of the four users:
JadeTheBabe
BelleLow
StreetcarBouvier
One. More. Spot. Left.
Luna could not let herself think about that because if she did, she would get her hopes up, and once they were up, they’d be inevitably shot down when she wasn’t chosen. So, instead, she concentrated on her work.
The Goldspiracy was real—Luna had coined the term after figuring out everything Jewel did in the app had purpose. Her idol was also a low-key genius, planting clues and Easter eggs in all her videos, essentially challenging the community to figure them out without ever acknowledging any of it. Sometimes Jewel even roped in Olive, her bestie, and Ethan, her brother, by hiding clues in their videos too.
Most of her challenges could be solved with an internet search or two and strung together to create a message, but that wasn’t the hard part. What stumped most was discovering the meaning behind the message using the Easter eggs.
No one on the Goldspiracy Forums was better at interpreting Jewel than SilentStar.
Alex cleared his throat, drawing Luna back into real life. She looked up, noticing for the first time that he hadn’t sped off the way he normally did. The car idled, engine vibrating under her feet.
“Moon Princess,” he said.
“Alex.” She gave him her full attention, turning her phone facedown in her lap.
“Notice anything different about me?”
“No?”
“No? Nothing at all?” He lifted his chin, looking down his nose at her.
She assessed him quickly. Hair: same reddish-brown. Face: frustratingly smooth and blemish-free. Eyes: a little red for a likely reason Luna refused to even consider because she didn’t want to think Alex would do that to her. Private school uniform: pressed and starchy.
The silence stretched between them. Nothing to say, nothing to add. She knew what he wanted, but held back …
“Nothing. At. All.” Alex turned his head to the side—ah!
“You pierced your ear!”
A gold stud stood out beautifully against his dusky skin tone. “Ears,” he said, showing her the other one. “I’ve been thinking about stretching. Gotta start small. What do you think? Do they look good?” He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror for probably the umpteenth time.
Luna didn’t feel one way or the other about it but liked that they seemed to make him happy. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Yeah? Sure?” He scoffed as he put the car in drive. “Just recklessly breaking my heart, as always.”
She laughed, shaking her head at him. “Your heart or your ego?”
“Same difference with me.” He gave her the sly smile that could brighten the most terrible of days.
Alex claimed the honor of being the third person Luna had met after moving in with Tasha—her half sister from their dad’s first marriage. He attended an elite private school on scholarship—sports and academic because he was amazing—but they lived in the same apartment complex. His mom, Cynthia, had volunteered him to be Luna’s school chauffeur. If it bothered him, he never showed it.
“Did you skip school to get that done?” she asked.
“Hmmm?”
“You didn’t have them this morning?”
“What?”
“Uh-huh. Your mom’s going to kick you out.” She grinned at him before looking at her phone again. Her smile didn’t last, fading as she watched the number of her notifications continue to climb. Luna’s mentions were in absolute shambles—inbox bursting with messages asking her thoughts, and she’d been tagged in literally hundreds of posts. The other Goldspiracy Founders were no different, speculating in their private chat and yelling for her to respond in all caps.
“Threaten to kick me out,” he said. “There’s a very loving difference in there.”
They didn’t live far from her school—about a twenty-minute drive. Alex pulled into their parking lot, finding a space in between their respective apartments. Painted a drab cream color with mellow brown accents, they weren’t much to look at it. The interior of her apartment was even plainer—a tiny two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment that cost more than it was worth, and yet the price went up every year.
Tasha had done her best to decorate with what she could find at thrift stores. The result was a mishmash of colors and styles that clashed horribly but still felt cozy. She loved pictures, filling the walls with a growing collage of prints of her friends, their family, and most important, her and Luna together. Selfies, stills from videos, the experimental portraits shot for fun at a park one day—almost every photo they had ever taken together eventually ended up on the wall.
When Luna’s mom had decided she didn’t want to be a mom anymore, Tasha had said, “Look, I don’t know how to be anybody’s parent, but I think I can be a guardian. I can do that.” Two weeks later, twelve-year-old Luna had moved in with her half sister, who was a whole ten years older.
And it had changed Luna’s whole life.
As usual, Tasha was at work or school or both and had left a note on the fridge.
Warm up one of the frozen lasagnas for dinner.
It’ll take about an hour to cook. Home by eleven ?
Luna folded the paper in half, sticking it in her pocket for safekeeping until she could put it in her journal with the other notes she’d saved, and then, messaged Tasha.
Luna: HOME!!!!! OH AND
JEWEL’S BACK! AHHHH!!!
“Lasagna tonight,” she said, placing it in the oven.
“Amazing,” Alex said. “Your room or the couch?”
Luna sighed quietly, thinking of the “concerned” texts she’d gotten from his girlfriend, Melody. It was funny because Melody was nice, like, seriously on par with a Disney Princess. But something about Alex spending every afternoon at Luna’s house upset her.
Eventually, Melody decided it would just be best to meet “woman to woman.” At the end of their talk—which wasn’t so much a conversation as being forced to listen to Melody for twenty minutes—Luna had promised to abide by the “Girlfriend Boundary.”
She didn’t understand it. But she promised.
“Couch,” she said.
By the time she joined him, he’d already dumped all his homework on the coffee table for show. He never actually did any of it when he was with her, usually choosing to watch anime on his phone instead. She sat next to him, deciding to close the forums and open Golden Rule.
A sparkling golden background filled the screen. At the bottom, a progress bar began to fill from left to right while a thin black line drew a prismatic oval on a stand. Gold faded into white, and two options appeared: CREATE AN ACCOUNT or SIGN IN. Watching the app load calmed her like it always did. She’d found it and Jewel during the darkest moment of her life, and to this day, they both continued to soothe her anxious nerves just by existing.
Since she never spoke in her videos, Luna’s Golden Rule inbox had remained blissfully empty. Most users knew she’d never reply. Videos tagged #GoldenWeekendXChallenge clogged the front page—users were already shooting their shots by the thousands because Jewel still hadn’t followed the fourth user.
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
