Sara Shepard - Never Have I Ever

So who was the better liar? Me . . . or him?

Be careful , I wanted to tell Emma. Sure, she had a brand-new boyfriend, but something told me that Thayer was the type of guy who could sweep her off her feet before she even knew what hit her. I had a feeling Emma was about to embark on a new kind of Lying Game with Thayer. But in this little club of two, the stakes were a matter of life or death.

A loud tick-tick-tick sounded across the room, the second hand on the bean-shaped clock on my wall suddenly moving again. The curtains fluttered in the window. And as I turned back to Emma and Thayer, time had unpaused for them, too, thrusting my sister into her next moment with Thayer.

A boy I might have once loved. A boy I was now almost certain I couldn’t trust. A boy who might have killed me.

As usual, Never Have I Ever couldn’t have happened without a dedicated and creative team. Thanks so much to Lanie Davis, Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, and Les Morgenstein at Alloy Entertainment for their time and care with this project. A huge shout-out to Kristin Marang and Liz Dresner for your awesome web promotions and skills, and to the fantastic editorial team at HarperTeen, Farrin Jacobs and Kari Sutherland. Sequels are sometimes hard, but I think this one went swimmingly thanks to all of you!

Also kudos and much praise for Katie Sise—I am so happy for your help. Love to my family, Shep, and Mindy (paparazzi princess), and to Ali and Caron, who love newborn lambs and talking about food as much as I do. Love to Joel for always putting up with me when I write these books (and for putting up with me in general). Much appreciation to all of the readers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, festival organizers, and everyone else in the reading community who has reached out to me to help promote this new series. All of you know who you are, and all of you are awesome! And for all you readers, yet another reminder: Never Have I Ever is a work of fiction, and I dearly hope none of you emulate the club’s sinister and often dangerous pranks. I hope you enjoy reading about Sutton’s spooky coven, but please don’t try any of her tricks at home!

Finally, a huge, exciting thank-you to Andrew Wang and Gina Girolamo at Alloy LA for developing these books for TV, Chuck Pratt for writing an amazing Lying Game pilot, to Alexandra Chando for playing such a convincing and loveable Sutton and Emma, and to everyone else working on the show henceforth. You all are amazing for believing in the books, and I can’t wait to see the series when it airs!