Spin the Bottle Series

For Jill Sherer, high school’s shaping up to be better than she could’ve imagined. From the first week of cheerleading practice, she and her best friends Hillary and Lorylyn are included in a circle of popular girls who open the door to a world of exciting social possibilities. And on the first day of school, Jill meets Todd – hot, smart, athletic, funny, and a flirt – the boy of her dreams. But things with Todd don’t go as Jill had hoped, she and Hillary drift apart, and her circle of friends is shaken because of Lorylyn’s new boyfriend. Desperate to get things back to the way they were, Jill, along with her new best friend Hilton – a gorgeous, intriguing girl who is the link between her old friends and her new ones – anxiously awaits the one thing that never changes...Landon Kessler’s parties. There, on a lake outside town, everyone comes together time after time for dancing, drinking, skinny-dipping, and spin the bottle. Spin the bottle...the game that leads to new loves, bitter jealousies, betrayals, and breakups. The game that teasingly draws the circle of friends together, only to rip them apart in unforeseeable ways. But they keep coming back, some with hope, some with malevolence, some with amused interest, to be part of the saga that unfolds party after party, month after month...

Freshman year is over. Summer is here. Jill and Hillary aren’t fighting anymore, Lorylyn is back with Brady and happier than ever, and Jill has her new best friends Hilton and Todd too – Hilton, whom she endlessly admires and wants to be more like, and Todd, with whom she’s crazily in love. After a somewhat rollercoaster year, things are looking pretty great. And on the last day of school, Hilton tells Jill an outrageous, stunning secret about her relationship with Reed, then at Landon’s party that night, Jill gets to kiss Todd in spin the bottle. And just like that, the tone for the summer is set. Sunny days on a sparkling blue lake...an overnight stay in a hotel with the boys...trips to Cedar Point, the Bahamas, and California...the thrill of romance in the air...sneaking out late at night...one girl’s “first time”...wild nights at Landon’s. The lingering high off all of it. Giggling, stories, excitement, inside jokes. Anticipation of what’s to come. For Jill, Hilton, Lorylyn, and Hillary, it’s their dream summer. Everything is picture-perfect; nothing can go wrong. But for some of the girls, what’s to come is nothing they would have wanted to anticipate. For things haven’t been as perfect as they’ve seemed. It’s just that the girls have ignored the signs. Signs they could have seen all along, had they been willing to look. But desperate to believe in the glimmering illusions of the summer, they close their eyes to what they don’t want to see, what they don’t want to believe. To the ominous gut instinct that everything is just a little too perfect, a little too good to be true. To the foreboding premonition that it won’t last, that control is somehow slipping away. Because everything that seems too good to be true...probably is.

At the end of sophomore year, Jill, Hilton, and Lorylyn made a pact to live their lives to the fullest over the summer, and they set out to do exactly that. As Brady and Brooke take a whirlwind tour through Spain and Portugal, the girls, now honed and accomplished liars, spend more and more drunken nights at Landon's and feel less and less guilty about deceiving their parents. Hilton's relationship with Landon takes on a new intensity. Jill, devastated by the gap between herself and Todd that’s been created by his relationship with Melanie, gets caught up in a fast and reckless summer fling with a flirtatious, charming boy. Lorylyn struggles with her still very-present feelings for Brady, and Hillary appears suddenly and inexplicably bored with Dirk, although she claims it's really no big deal. While everyone outwardly parties the summer away and puts on the pretense of being happy, tumultuous forces with the power to change everything are stirring and building behind the scenes...Brady's constant thoughts of Lorylyn, Kara and Andy's budding relationship, Melanie's growing jealousy of Jill, and destructive, devastating secrets kept by one person and by groups of people — secrets no one else could even begin to imagine.

The summer before senior year. Lazy afternoons in Jill’s pool, an all-out TP-ing war, wild parties at Landon’s. Hillary is more into Dirk than ever, and even though this summer is bittersweet for Hilton and Lorylyn because of Landon’s and Brady’s imminent departures, both girls agree their relationships are the best they’ve ever been. Not everything is perfect though...Todd’s parents’ divorce is turning nastier by the day, and Jill desperately clings to increasingly infrequent moments with him as his bond with Melanie grows more intense. As hot sunny days roll into warm breezy nights, the date that’s been set for months draws closer and closer...the night of the goodbye party. The circle of friends has been coming to Landon’s for three years to dance, drink, skinny-dip, and play spin the bottle, and on August 18, it will happen for the last time. And it’s going to be the biggest and craziest and best party of all... Or so they think. For at this party, the shattering secret that has been kept hidden for three years will be revealed, in an unforeseeable moment that will rock the lives of every person who’s been a regular at Landon’s over the years. It will destroy their beliefs, perceptions, and illusions, and it will break the circle of friends forever. And as the ex-seniors go off to college, Jill, Hilton, Lorylyn, Hillary, Todd, Dirk, and Bennett are left to pick up the pieces and try to salvage their senior year...