Eight college students from various countries meet for a month’s Australian summer study abroad. Only six will make it home. THIS STAYS BETWEEN US, alternative title The Outback, shows that if the landscape doesn’t kill you, maybe your teammates will.   Ten years after the study, the remains of a young woman are discovered. This is all that’s left of Phoebe, one of the students from Atlanta. The spare outback town has become even more run down in the intervening decade, as the group discovers. They reunite in Sydney at first, to be interviewed by police.   Claire from Illinois, Phoebe's roommate and friend, has disturbing memories of the incidents on the tour – jealousy, alcohol, drugs, partying and stupidity. But could it be possible that she killed Phoebe, or that she knows who really did? The reader has to piece everything together, from working back through the trip as recalled by both Phoebe and Claire.   Not long after the police interviews, the former students realise that another death has occurred in connection with the murder. With the evidence of the body, the police are sure someone killed poor Phoebe. Did someone also kill one of the tour guides in Sydney? They don’t know whom to suspect, and (stupidly, as they realise) they go to the outback town.   Claire, Phoebe, Josh, Declan, Kyan, and Tomas are clearly male or female names to me, but I kept forgetting whether Adrien and Ellery were boys or girls, so the confused love triangles – rectangles – whatevers were harder to keep track of, especially as they were all drunk and hitting on one another randomly most of the time. I wasn’t impressed, safe to say. To be fair, I have read books by young Australian women, and they concur with heavy beer drinking, due to the heat. I also wasn’t impressed by the tour guides, and I imagined the college running the event was fictional, but Google says there is a college of that name in Victoria.   There is suspense, there are twists, there are lies and denials, and a lot of bad people, aside from the group. There are also some good people. And we find bushfires, because after all, this is the Outback. Or, THIS STAYS BETWEEN US, if you prefer. Sara Ochs is a law professor from upstate New York, and this is her second novel. While it’s a New Adult tale, adult crime fans may enjoy the panics and puzzles.