An American high school is the setting for a day of drama. Originally Joelle Charbonneau wrote THE TESTING about students living in a dystopian world where adults dictated their moves, dreams and successes. TIME BOMB is the opposite. All the main characters are modern teens, they are planning and scrambling in an attempt to stay alive... and one of them may be a bomber.

First we are introduced to the six young adults who come in to school shortly before term begins. Each one has a reason for being there, although I can tell you I never went to my school if I didn't have to go to class. And while they are scattered around the building, an explosion suddenly rips through the structure.

The rest of the tale is not for the tender, as Tad, Rashid, Cas, Z, Kaitlin, Diana, and Frankie scrabble to free themselves and climb over rubble or through ceilings. The school is a few floors high, the stairwells are blocked, and more bombs detonate as the first responders arrive. Just possibly, one of the group is the bomber.

The young people themselves are peculiar. Not one of them has real friends. They are each self-righteously sure that they have the worst life in the world. The footballer who thinks he may be gay, the biracial lad, the senator's daughter, the sulker whose mother died, the kid who has to say 'I am not a terrorist' constantly, the bullied girl, in short a bunch of the usual tropes found in American school stories. The only person I really felt sorry for was the girl who was trapped under an air conditioner and obviously couldn't be detonating any bombs. That's probably deliberate on the part of the author, but if I don't like the major characters it's hard to worry about the outcome. Just read this as a thriller for young adults, then, rather than a heroic journey. Each character gets a chance to behave like a hero. Most of them take it, in however limited a fashion.

TIME BOMB didn't take me long to read and most readers will probably skip quickly through the early chapters to get to the meat of the story. This part is very well described, the shambles, hazards, and sheer terror. What do you think you would do in this situation? You can learn a lot by reading the list of what works for the students. I recommend the adventure for those over fifteen. It contains some moderately strong language.