WHAT HAVE WE DONE......A SAD, HORRIBLE ADOLESCENCE COME BACK TO ENDANGER ITS SURVIVORS...(*****)

 What Have We Done by Alex Finlay (2023)

           Initially, I worried about the premise here. Oh no....not another group of friends haunted by a terrible crime of their adolescence, a shared guilt that's now come roaring back to put them in harm's way. I dreaded plowing through an onslaught of angst-ridden internal monologues.

           But what a terrific surprise in store for any reader who picks this up.......a non-stop, breathless thrill ride guaranteed to make you lose track of whatever you're doing, not moving an inch until you've finished it.

            Alex Finlay throws multiple, familiar genres into the mix.......starting with a bunch of emotionally broken, abused, orphaned teens trying to survive in a horrific group home. 'Savior House, its very name a sick joke, is a nightmarish hellhole right out of a Stephen King novel riddled with corrupt neglect and violent bullying. And the victims of this abysmal place, suspect its caretakers of kidnapping and sex trafficking.

           But this small group of the tormented Savior House kids strike back and manage to escape the hellish house, leaving a buried body behind them.......a secret that comes back to throw their later lives into lethal jeopardy.

           Now, as grown adults with a host of dysfunctions and troubles, four of them just barely survived attempts on their lives - Nico, a gambling addicted reality TV show producer, Donnie, a washed up, drug and booze addled rock star, Artemis, a powerful tech billionaire and Jenna, a former graduate and operative of one of those 'La Femme Nikita'-'Orphan X' assassin academies. But another of their original group wasn't so lucky.

           The hit-girl tasked with killing them all is a scary young sociopath, who can uncannily appear in two places at once, and wields that pneumatic captive bolt-firing tube favored by "No Country For Old Men"s infamous killer Anton Chigurh.

             What follows from this point on..... the book lays out an unrelenting chase as Jenna and her surviving Savior House friends become both hunters and hunted, unburying all the terrible dark secrets of their past and staying out of the crosshairs of ......well, that's another of the book's many twists you won't hear from me.

            All I can say is that I raced through "What Have We Done" at record speed, one of those books where you constantly find yourself saying..."just one more chapter and then I'll pack it in for the night"....and then end up awake to read way more chapters into 3 'O clock in the morning.....

             And that makes this one a pure and simple 5 star thriller(*****)..... a must red for armchair adrenalin junkies.