LAST NIGHT AT THE CIRCLE CINEMA

The gripping story of three friends facing the end of high school, the end of a friendship and the next stage in their lives.

Olivia, Bertucci, and Codman were the trio no one else in high school could quite figure out, an impenetrable triangle of friendship. Now they’re graduating and about to start new lives away at college and without one another. Beyond their friendship, there’s one thing they have in common: the Circle Cinema, a once thriving old movie theater now reduced to a boarded up concrete box, condemned and about to be forgotten forever—which is, as far as Olivia and Codman can tell, a lot like what’s going to happen to them. So, in one last desperate effort to hold on to whatever they have, Bertucci hatches a plan—an experiment, really. He convinces Olivia and Codman to join him in spending their last night before graduation locked inside the Cinema’s concrete walls. None of them can open the box before sunrise. Over the course of the night, the trio is then forced to face one another, the events of the past year, and whatever is to come when the new day dawns. Emily Franklin is the author of more than fifteen young adult books, including The Half Life of Planets (nominated for YALSA’s Best Book of the Year) and Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (named to 2013 Rainbow List), and The Other Half of Me (an ALA Popular Paperback pick). Her work has appeared on National Public Radio and in the New York Times among other places. She also writes novels and short stories for adults and was longlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Award, the largest short story award in the world. She lives with her husband, four kids and enormous dog outside of Boston, Massachusetts.