Tess Morelli is living a dream: she was selected for an incredible exchange program in Rome, where she's spending a month taking in the beautiful sights and sounds and tastes of Italy. Her Italian counterpart, Sofia, is staying with Tess's family while she's away. Sure, her host parents barely speak English, but they seem cool enough. Until one day when Tess is woken up before dawn by her hosts, who are on a video chat with their daughter. Tess sees her sleeping parents on the screen-and Sofia brandishing a knife over them. Tess's parents will die, her hosts tell her, unless she follows their exact instructions. They've taken her passport, credit cards and phone, and Tess, at their mercy, must commit a series of crimes that add up to a shocking plan. Now Tess must find a way to outwit these criminals before she-and her family-end up dead.

 

 

This book has been graded for interest at 14-18 years.

There are 352 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2022 by Sourcebooks, Inc .

Jody Feldman has always loved riddles and brainteasers and word games, and she lives in a city on a river whose name contains four s's, two p's, and four i's. Jody has written as many books for young readers as there are players in a doubles tennis match. To find out how many brothers she has, take the number of bases on a baseball diamond and divide it by the number of times Grover Cleveland was president of the United States.