What Happened on Hicks Road

by Hannah Jayne

Overview

Those eyes. Wide. Ice blue. A swath of blond hair illuminated in headlights. Then, blackness.

Thump!

"We hit something."

Lennox Oliver is loving her new life in California. For the first time, she feels normal. She has friends, and a maybe boyfriend and best of all no one knows the truth about her past and what happened to her mom.

But everything changes the night after a party when a drive on the supposedly haunted Hicks Road turns deadly and Lennox hits something…or someone.

Her friends say it was nothing, at worst, a deer in the road. But Lennox can't shake the vision of the girl in the headlights: bloody hair, wide, terrified eyes, lips parted in a scream. When she goes out to investigate, there's a slight dent in the car, but that's it: no body, no blood.

Lennox wants to go to the police—but how can she? She shouldn't have been driving, and as her friends remind her, there's no evidence that she actually hit anything. All Lennox wants to do is go back to her boring, normal life. But when a note saying FIND ME is slipped through her window, she fears that there was a girl she hit on Hicks Road that night …or she's slipping deeper into the illness that took her mother.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728262918
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	08/29/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	471,201
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	HL760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Hannah Jayne lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes cozy mysteries, young adult fiction, chick lit, and grocery lists that she never seems to remember to bring to the grocery store. Hannah shares a house with two neurotic, feet-attacking cats and has Kryptonite-like weakness for donuts. Visit www.hannahjschwartz.com.

Editorial Reviews

06/26/2023

When 17-year-old new girl Lennox Oliver turns her car onto Hicks Road in San Jose, she ignores her friends’ claims that it’s haunted, until a frightened, unknown blond girl suddenly appears in the middle of the road. Lennox knows she hit the stranger—she felt the thump, and there’s a dent in the front of her car—but she doesn’t find a body, and her passengers deny having seen anything unusual. As her peers go about their lives, Lennox is preoccupied with the mystery of her assumed hit-and-run. Could it have been a deer? Or a hallucination brought about by hereditary schizophrenia, for which her mother has been hospitalized since Lennox was nine? A blissful distraction arises in the form of a fledgling romance with popular senior class president Owen Rossum. But as more clues emerge surrounding the incident on Hicks Road, the more confused Lennox becomes. If the resolution is a little uneven, quick pacing, wry prose, and abundant flashbacks that flesh out Lennox’s history with her mother and her mental health balance out this climactic thriller by Jayne (The Girl in the Headlines). Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amberly Finarelli, Andrea Hurst Literary. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Quick pacing, wry prose, and abundant flashbacks... balance out this climactic thriller by Jayne." — Publisher's Weekly

"A fast-paced thriller that will have readers questioning what’s real... it will keep readers on the edges of their seats." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2023-05-24
A teenage girl whose mother struggles with mental illness navigates a new school, new friendships, and a crime she may have committed.

Seventeen-year-old Lennox Oliver, the new girl in her San Jose, California, high school, is finally fitting in and finding friends after having lived in many different places with her traveling ER nurse father. It’s been the two of them since she was 9, ever since her mother was admitted to a mental hospital for treatment for her schizophrenia. One night, while Lennox is driving with friends, she hits someone—she clearly sees the frightened girl in her headlights before feeling a thump. But while there’s a dent in the car, there’s no body. In the days following, Lennox feels like she’s unraveling, and she worries that she’s succumbing to schizophrenia too. Jayne paints a picture of a teen whose life feels almost perfect—with nice friends, a boyfriend, a great school—except for the possibility that she’s a murderer looming over her. This story, told with plenty of flashbacks, visions, red herrings, and snappy dialogue, draws readers into a twisted tale exploring questions of conscience and belonging. Anxiety inducing and full of twists and turns yet realistic and relatable, it will keep readers on the edges of their seats. Characters are cued White.

A fast-paced thriller that will have readers questioning what’s real. (Thriller. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews