Targeted by their sexually predatory English teacher who threatens their promising futures, high school seniors Jordan, Nick, and Chloe hatch a desperate plan for both revenge and retribution: plot a murder so perfect that maybe, just maybe, they can get away with it.
Twelfth-grade English teacher Mr. Lowell turns up dead one May morning. Cause of death: autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. Everyone at Ridgeview Alternative School is shocked. Everyone, that is, except honor students Jordan Byrne, Nick Moretti, and Chloe Underwood.
Back in September, aspiring civil rights lawyer Jordan, Juilliard-hopeful Nick, and budding actress Chloe land in Clifford “Call Me Cliff” Lowell’s classroom with big dreams of university scholarships and lucrative careers. Soon, they discover the well-respected educator and head of the Teachers’ Federation is actually a sexual predator with a long list of victims — a list that’s about to include the three of them. Facing a manipulative monster, a complacent administration, and grim futures, the trio hatches a desperate plot: plan a murder so perfect that maybe, just maybe, they can get away with it …
- A propulsive thriller with jaw-dropping twists and heart-pounding suspense, in which three teenagers, while working on their school’s production of Macbeth, also plot to murder their sexually predatory English teacher.
- Jordan, the mastermind, is a trans man. The novel explores Jordan’s coming out and gender transition, and how Lowell’s feelings toward Jordan change from lust to hatred, and his tactics switch from grooming to punishing.
- Vindictive leading lady Chloe is not a “perfect victim,” but as Lowell manipulates and takes advantage of her, Chloe’s story shows how anyone — no matter how unlikely — can fall prey to abusive relationships.
- Written by a father-son duo, Our Little Secret combines Edward Kay’s experience as an award-winning author, screenwriter, and showrunner of action-comedies, with Mikhael Klassen-Kay’s passion for Gothic fiction that explore themes of queerness and neurodiversity.
- Gritty, darkly comedic, and stomach-churning, Our Little Secret sheds much-needed light on very real issues of sexual assault, grooming, and predatory teachers who manipulate the education system to skirt the law, and how queer, economically-challenged, and/or otherwise marginalized students are particularly vulnerable to their machinations.
