How We Fall Apart is an engaging teen thriller with a timely twist

Look, I will never say no to a YA thriller about an elite group of prep school teens struggling to hide a dark secret, solve a murder, or dodge a faceless stalker. (I watched every episode of Pretty Little Liars and I am not sorry.) So, in that vein, Katie Zhao’s How We Fall Apart is right up my alley, because it is in fact all three –  the first installment in a fast-paced twisty mystery about a group of (mostly) rich teens who find themselves struggling to solve the murder of one of their former best friends after they’re threatened by a secret gossip account called “The Proctor.”

See, the Pretty Little Liars vibes practically write themselves.

But what sets Zhao’s novel apart is the fact that this is a familiar teen thriller with a very unfamiliar cast. While it is set at the elite New York school Sinclair Prep, the bulk of its characters are Asian American, which means the story is positioned to tell the sorts of character stories we don’t often see in this genre. In addition to the constant scheming, lying, betrayals, and romantic twists that are the hallmarks of a story like this, How We Fall Apart also honestly deals with the pressures placed on overachieving students, particularly those from immigrant families, and the way they’re often taught that academic success is worth any cost – even their own lives.

The story centers on Nancy Luo, a scholarship student at the prestigious Richard Sinclair Preparatory School. A second-generation immigrant, her primary goal in life is to prove that the many sacrifices made by her parents in the name of her education were worth it, namely by being the top student at her school. But she’s constantly coming in second behind Jamie Ruan, a brilliant but brutal girl who will stop at nothing to win, whether that means blackmailing her enemies or betraying those closest to her, including Nancy, and their friends Alexander, Akil, and Krystal.

But when Jamie goes missing after her father is arrested for embezzlement and later turns up dead, Nancy doesn’t know how to feel. Her relationship with Jamie was complicated, a mix of love and jealousy that often led Nancy to hate her as much as she cared about her. But when she and her friends become top suspects in her murder – thanks to a malicious secret account called “The Proctor” posting secrets on the school gossip app – Nancy, Alexander, Akil, and Krystal will have to work together to try and expose their identity while trying to keep their worst secrets (including an event referred to only as “The Incident”) from going public.

How We Fall Apart is fast-paced and twisty, but it doesn’t shy away from tackling the sort of big complex pressures placed on students like Nancy and her friends. One of their group is hiding a secret relationship with a teaching assistant, another takes drugs to enhance their academic performance. Other students are referenced in gossip app posts and flashbacks admitting to the horrors of disappointing their strict parents or being physically punished for not bringing home their highest grades. They’re all afraid of disappointing their families, of coming in second, of not grasping the gold ring (a.k.a. top Ivy League admissions and the oft-referenced bright futures that come with them).

It makes for an interesting dichotomy, as readers are encouraged to indulge and live vicariously through these kids who ostensibly have everything even as Zhao reminds us that the image they all project is often just that. These kids may be the best and the brightest, but they’re all often miserable, and nowhere is that more clear than in the book’s presentation of Jamie, who frequently ruins others to assuage her own misery, chasing the affection of a father for whom she’ll never be good enough. (I actually wish the book had shown us a little more of Jamie’s mental health struggles and the ways she clearly didn’t feel allowed to ask for the help she needed.)

How We Fall Apart is the first novel in a series, and one has to wonder where the story will go from here. (The events at the end of the novel hint at an intriguingly dark turn for Nancy, but…we’ll see.) I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

How We Fall Apart is available now.