AS IF is a high-stakes, emotionally charged thriller about the dark side of influence, the resilience of friendship, and the desperate fight to protect kids in a digital age.
Fourteen-year-old Hannah Reyes has built a small but loyal following online-craft livestreams, DIY projects, and the ordinary spark of a teen sharing her world. But one night, while broadcasting from the safety of her bedroom, a "brand task" drops into her inbox. It looks harmless. It isn't. By morning, Hannah has vanished between school and a supposed collab, leaving behind only digital crumbs.
Her best friends-Elena, Cami, Maya, and Zoé-refuse to wait. Scouring chats, screenshots, and secret accounts, they chase Hannah's trail even as adults dismiss their instincts. What they uncover is bigger and more dangerous than anyone wants to admit: a game of organized exploitation hiding in plain sight.
Enter Special Agent Jordan Hale, an investigator who knows the signs all too well but finds himself blocked by bureaucracy and jurisdictional turf wars. To him, this isn't a "missing teen." It's a system designed to lure, trap, and broadcast. And he's running out of time.
As the girls' rogue investigation collides with Hale's task force, both sides are forced into an uneasy alliance. Every click, every post, every leak pushes predators to escalate their threats-from staged livestreams to public taunts that turn the case into a national spectacle. Parents clash with investigators. The press circles like sharks. And Hannah, trapped inside the predators' "final game," becomes the unwilling face of a battle no one asked her to fight.
From suburban bedrooms to shadowed storage units, from viral streams to the halls of Washington, AS IF builds toward a relentless climax where predators tighten their net, allies turn into liabilities, and survival hinges on whether courage can outweigh fear.
Spanning fifteen chapters and a haunting bonus epilogue, AS IF doesn't just end with a rescue-it ends with a reckoning. Out of Hannah's ordeal comes a landmark piece of legislation: The Hannah Law, a safeguard written in her name to shield future children from the same predatory games.
Gripping, cinematic, and unflinching, this novel is for readers of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and One of Us Is Lying. It's not just a story about what happens online-it's a story about what happens when the people most at risk refuse to stay invisible.
