About the Book:

Ten friends. One night. A classy celebration. A deranged killer. Lots of murder. 

Noah and his best friends are finally graduating from Woodthorn Academy with the world and all its promises laid out before them. To celebrate exam results day, they’re hosting a party weekend at Black Stone, an opulent country estate, for the whole school to attend. But for one night only, the ten friends will have a low-key celebration – after all, it’s how the upper echelons begin their futures.

But things take a sinister turn when they find themselves in the crosshairs of a killer making one simple every hour, one person must be evicted from the house or someone inside the house will die.

With nowhere to run and a killer on the prowl, choices must be made. But, as people inside the house start to go missing too, it soon becomes clear that nobody is safe. By the time morning comes, who will have survived the night? And is the killer much closer than they realised . . .

Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here. Find on Bookshop.org UK (affiliate link).

---

About the Author:

Benjamin Dean is a full-time author with a background in celebrity journalism. He has interviewed a host of glitzy celebrities and broke the news that Rihanna can’t wink (she blinks, in case you were wondering). His award-winning middle-grade debut, Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow, was described as ‘One of the most joyful books you’ll read this year’ (The Bookseller), and he’s since gone on to publish The Secret Sunshine Project, as well The King is Dead and How to Die Famous for older readers.

Instagram

---

Interview:

BURY YOUR FRIENDS is your fourth thriller for teens – and we both devoured it on setting. What do you think makes thrillers such compulsive reading?

I think it’s the uncertainty and not knowing what’s going to happen next or where the story might go. It’s what I love so much about thrillers – you can think you know what’s happening and then suddenly everything gets turned on its head with no warning!

Did you start the book knowing whodunnit? What elements do you typically need to start writing a book?

When I start writing a thriller, I flesh out the main cast of characters and give them all one or two motives as to why they’d be behind it all and decide from there which one I think packs the best punch. I’m always thinking about that final reveal and how I want that climactic plot twist to land.

However, I went into writing BURY YOUR FRIENDS with one character in mind, but as I got deeper into the writing, a different character kept jumping off the page and I just couldn’t ignore them. When I realised what their motive was, it was so unhinged and I knew I had to do it.

BURY YOUR FRIENDS is hysterically funny at turns. Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to include humour or was that something that developed over the course of writing it?

I think all of my books have some element of humour and sarcasm in them, which I really enjoy writing, but this one was absolutely the one that made me laugh the most while writing. I was really inspired by that dry, sharp dialogue from movies like Scream and Bodies Bodies Bodies, and having a cast of nepo babies just offered up so many ludicrous moments that really made me belly-laugh. The ‘I come out of the closet as an ally’ scene really got me!

How did you craft the rich kids at Noah’s school? What sources of inspiration did you draw on?

It was the first time writing a story where I had so many characters to play with and see where they’d take me, so I had a lot of fun figuring them out and giving them their intricacies. I do think watching so many drama/comedy TV shows growing up in the noughties helped – think Desperate Housewives, 90210, Pretty Little Liars, Skins, Footballers’ Wives. They always pushed it way beyond belief and had these characters that were slightly ridiculous but so memorable. I try to bring an element of that to all my books.

As well as being a funny (and fun) slasher, the book offers a commentary on the obliviousness of the rich and both what opens doors and what people think opens doors. Was this theme there from the start and what made you want to explore it in a thriller?

Yeah, as soon as I knew the cast of characters were going to mostly be nepo babies, I started thinking about the dynamic of their friendships and the imbalance of some people needing to work three times as hard for the same opportunities that are simply handed to others. It really got me thinking about performative allyship too and how it’s easy to be an ally when it asks nothing of you, but how that quickly changes when things get tough. Exploring those ideas in a thriller and asking privileged people to think about evicting their friends to be killed just to keep themselves safe was something that really drew me in and made me want to keep writing.

The book involves smart home tech used as weapons of control in the hands of several characters. What do you think of our increasing reliance on such technology as a society to manage our home lives?

On the one hand, I love the concept and idea of smart houses, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about how that would backfire in this kind of intense scenario. Like, yeah, it’s great that your locks and security is controlled by a tablet but…what if that tablet ends up in the wrong hands?! I’m also just adamant the robot uprising is coming and I won’t be trapped in my own house by a bot gaining sentience!

How well do you think you would survive this weekend?

Oh I would survive simply because I wouldn’t be there in the first place! Before I started writing BURY YOUR FRIENDS, I went to a big house in the middle of nowhere with friends for a weekend and I spent the entire time thinking we were done for. I am not a countryside kind of person at all! But if you forced me to be in that house while this was all going on…I’d give myself a pretty solid chance of surviving. I’m not answering no phone, I’m not going down to the basement, and I’m certainly not saying ‘’I’ll be right back.’

What UKYA book do you recommend for readers once they’ve finished BURY YOUR FRIENDS?

This is so out of left-field considering it’s not a thriller or in any way related to BURY YOUR FRIENDS, but I would reeeeeeeally recommend SONGLIGHT by Moira Buffini! (Affilate link) It was one of my favourite books that I read last year and the sequel is publishing really soon, so now is a good time to get into it!

Thank you for talking to us, Benjamin!