THE FIXES

A group of uber-wealthy teens embark on a series of increasingly destructive pranks in this Gossip Girl- esque wicked drama.

Eric Connelly is crumbling under the weight of his dad’s expectations. He cannot seem to live up to the “Connelly Man” standards – but when he meets the mysterious, free-spirited Jordan Grant, his dad’s rules seem so much less important than they used to.

Jordan and Eric – now “E”– join up with two of the most popular girls in school to combat their rich-kid boredom by cruising their beachside hometown of Capilano. But as Jordan seduces E further into this depraved life, the group starts to kill time in more nefarious ways.

It is Jordan who escalates the Pack’s dares from mostly harmless jaunts like joyrides in boosted cars and Bling Ring-style luxury shoplifting sprees into more violent activities. Eric is intoxicated by this new freedom and by Jordan’s attention, and he is swept up in the Pack’s activities, even as Paige and Haley start to have reservations about what they have been doing. When Jordan starts talking big – can E help him build a bomb, he wonders? – E must decide if he is too far down the rabbit hole to back out now.

The Suicide Pack themselves have very little to offer by way of morals – they do what they want and don’t care about what happens to anyone else. As in Gossip Girl, it’s a thrill to read about their shocking exploits. If Andrew Smith is the Kurt Vonnegut of YA, Owen Matthews is the Brett Easton Ellis. The mix of male and female members of the Pack keep this accessible for all readers, and though the protagonist and love interest are both male, the two main female characters have fully-formed, fascinating stories of their own.
Owen plays with word and sentence placement on the page, making the chapters short, breezy, and easy to read.

Owen Matthews was raised on rap music and violent video games. He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program and has worked on fishing boats and in casinos all over the world, and currently writes critically-acclaimed crime thrillers under a secret identity. A fan of fast cars and sugary breakfast cereals, Matthews lives in Vancouver, Canada.