Laura Bates has created a powerful YA thriller that explores the aftermath of a plane crash. On the surface, the teens involved are your stereotypical jocks and cheerleaders but when their plane crashes on an island in the Gulf of Mexico on their way home, secrets and lies run rampant.

I loved the twists and turns that No Accident provides. The story highlights the lies we too readily accept and challenges us to do better to dismantle the rape culture that runs rampant. While too mature for my middle school students, I''d highly recommend this book to any reader so long as the trigger warning at the beginning of the book remains in place.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

A private plane carrying some high school basketball players and cheerleaders crashes on a tropical island. Unfortunately they are snotty obnoxious kids who at first don't seem to appreciate the problem facing them: they need food and water in order to survive. Think Lord of the Flies, which some of these characters mention. The longer they're on the island, bad things start happening. Which one of them is trying to hurt the others and why?

I enjoyed this YA mystery/thriller. Placing the events unraveling the teens party against the setting of a desert island/plane crash was certainly a unique choice, but I think the author did a good job of setting it up. I did feel like the story could have been altered to make the antagonist's anger and actions more intentional, but the overwhelming message of gendered inequality and misogyny and violence against women came through quite well in this novel.

This book touches on the very real effects of rape on an individuals mind. How it changes the way that that person sees the world. Mixed with the trauma of a plane crash and being stranded on an island with no hope of survival, this book will keep you in your toes.

Modern day Agatha Christie on an island. A group of teens gets shipped wrecked and that’s when the intrigue begins. Someone has it in for them. I absolutely love this book and couldn’t wait to find out what happened!

This YA read captured my attention as I love survival stories that include deserted islands. In this book The Trial by Laura Bates, a private plane carrying football players and cheerleaders and their coaches are on their way to a tournament when turbulence strikes and the plane ends up crashing on a desert island. Only a few of them end up surviving and the rest are dead. On the island survived is Football players - Brian, Jason, and Elliott and Cheerleaders - Shannon, Hayley, Jessa, and May. Can the survivors work together to survive the environment until they are rescued or when strange things start happening that threaten their survival, is someone on the island trying to kill them off one by one? Hayley who is the outsider and only joined the cheerleader team to pad up her college application knows something happened at the party the night before they crashed and with the accidents happening - she just knows it is connected. When Brian almost dies and everyone starts to turn on each other, Hayley decides the only way to settle things is to hold a trial and hear an account of everybody's stories about what happened at the party. During this latter part of the book when the trial happens, the book turns more from a YA survival story to a #MeToo tale as it turns out one of them was sexually assaulted at the party. The latter part of this story focuses on women being assaulted by athletes etc and not being able, to tell the truth, as the elites tend to be the ones believed rather than the females, or the guilty parties are not punished adequately for the crime like The Brock Turner case. The author of this book is also famous for her views on Feminism and Female Empowerment