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The characters in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Lindsey Lee Johnson’s alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel about the goings-on in and out of a high school in Marin County, Calif., spend most of their time spectacularly failing to see beneath one another’s surfaces. . . . Ms. Johnson’s characters are unpredictable, contradictory and many things at once, which make them particularly satisfying. . . . Here’s high school life in all its madness.
— Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
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Told through multiple perspectives, the novel offers a rich portrait of these characters’ experiences, laying bare their desires without demeaning the validity of their concerns. . . . [Lindsay Lee] Johnson proves herself a master of the coming-of-age story. . . . With a fearless compassion, Johnson artfully unwraps who these people truly are, as well as whom they claim to be.
— The Boston Globe
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In her stunning debut, Johnson . . . explores the fallout among a group of teens—an alpha girl turned stoner, a striving B student, an Ivy League wannabe—who prove, in the end, less entitled than simply empty and searching. An eye-opener.
— People (Book of the Week)
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If you are cruising for a quality read that’s also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It’s a high-wire high school drama.
— Elle
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Gripping . . . Each chapter offers a vignette into a more complicated interior life—ones that involve inappropriate student-teacher relationships, cheating on SATs, drugs, sex, and house parties. . . . Lindsey Lee Johnson works a convincing assortment of different voices into her debut.
— GQ
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Johnson manages to intensify the perils of adolescence in the same vein as Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.
— San Francisco Magazine
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These characters seem like typical teenagers, but beneath the surface is a dark incident that makes this chilling portrait of growing up in the digital age pretty unputdownable.
— PureWow
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A fascinating, often comic, and ultimately heartbreaking read . . . Like Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, Lindsey Lee Johnson’s The Most Dangerous Place on Earth ekes engaging drama out of an upper-crust high school’s social politics. . . . In its most insightful moments, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth also reminds us just how moving a teen drama can be.
— The Dallas Morning News
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A young high school teacher stumbles on buried secrets in this engrossing, multilayered drama.
— Cosmopolitan
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The characters in Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel affected me in a way I can’t remember feeling since I binge-watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. . . . You’ll walk away feeling like you could revisit a hallway drama armed with bulletproof perspective.
— Glamour
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Engrossing . . . affluent students become embroiled in high-stakes drama with their teachers and, of course, each other.
— InStyle
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In Johnson’s excellent debut, her sharp storytelling conveys an authentic sense of the perils of adolescence. . . . Johnson allows these dramas to unfold through various shifting perspectives. . . . She keeps the action brisk and deepens readers’ investment, culminating in a high school party that goes wrong. Readers may find themselves so swept up in this enthralling novel that they finish it in a single sitting.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Johnson’s polished debut novel puts a human face to the details of today’s daily headlines of teen life.
— Library Journal (starred review)
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In sharp and assured prose, roving among characters, Lindsey Lee Johnson plumbs the terrifying depths of a half-dozen ultraprivileged California high school kids. I read The Most Dangerous Place on Earth in two chilling gulps. It’s a phenomenal first book, a compassionate Less Than Zero for the digital age.
— Anthony Doerr, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Light We Cannot See
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The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is a deftly composed mosaic of adolescence in the modern age, frightening and compelling in its honesty: a terrific debut, and one that I didn’t want to set down.
— Julia Pierpont, New York Times bestselling author of Among the Ten Thousand Things
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Lindsey Lee Johnson’s gripping debut novel leads us into the moral freefall of a group of privileged Marin County students following a dark incident in their shared past. Beautifully inhabited and written in supple, confident prose, this novel of adolescent violence and vulnerability is a knockout!
— Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander
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An astonishing debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth plunges the reader into the fraught power dynamics between (and among) high school teachers and students with both nuance and fearlessness. With a stunning constellation of characters’ voices and a fiercely compelling story, it’s impossible to put down, or to forget.
— Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and Dare Me
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In her superb first novel, Lindsey Lee Johnson deftly illuminates a certain strain of privileged American adolescence and the existential minefield these kids are forced to navigate. Elegantly constructed and beautifully written, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth reads like Jane Austen for this anxious era.
— Seth Greenland, author of I Regret Everything and The Angry Buddhist
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“High school drama has taken on a new tension in the age of social media—as Lindsey Lee Johnson proves in a timely and provocative debut that recalls Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep.”
— BookPage