Upon reading the blurb for this book on NG I was immediately intrigued. The twisted nature of high school, cliques, mob mentality, and growing through those unsettling times always fascinates me in stories. With The Most Dangerous Place on Earth this holds true for the plot and premise of Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel.

Impressive is her third person writing and the easy way she hooks you in the beginning. There's a very mature quality to her writing that I find admirable. Her writing hails as descriptive prose and immersive for the reader. This story is told from succinct chapters from different characters. In between those new characters is a chapter from a newly minted, young English teacher. The arc of the story is woven through all of these mindsets. The thought of this is brilliant in my opinion. However, this method of storytelling ended up giving me contradicting feelings. I felt as though my connection to the characters was stunted. There was always this feeling of something big on the horizon with each of them but it never really culminated for me.

Her illustrations of high school in an affluent area outside of San Francisco were equally as intriguing as the plot. I thought the setting really lent itself to being pertinent to the story she telling. And each character are ones, in some capacity, that you’ll recognize from your own teenage life which I found important while reading as it gave me a small sense of connection. Overall, I enjoyed this story. It held my attention and provided a solid plot. There were a few areas where I wished there was more depth and richness from certain characters definitely but it was enjoyable.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson is a story set in a place that many of us either relish or dread: high school. The story opens in the eighth grade with Cally Broderick being called into the office for neglecting to do her homework. While she is there, she unwittingly extends an act of kindness to the awkward kid at school. This sets off a chain of events which leads to a shocking event. Fast forward three years, Molly Nicoll is the new English teacher at the high school, she finds Cally, and her classmates in their junior year. Each chapter gives a different perspective of the same high school. You have the brain who must live up to his parents’ expectations. The talented dancer, the jock, the screw-up and all the other characters we seem to meet in high school. Their stories intertwined into a climax which leave the students and teacher baffled by the turn of events. Who will see their dream come true and who just wants to survive high school?
The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is set in Mill Valley of Marin County, California, an area of affluence and privilege. However, inside this high school we see the same issues and attitudes that this story could be set in almost any high school in America and the events could still resonate with us whether we enjoyed high school or were happy it was over. I highly recommend The Most Dangerous Place on Earth as a story that our actions have consequences and those consequences can follow us for the rest of our lives.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
will be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble
on January 10, 2017
in hardcover and ebook

The place is Mill Valley, California, the most affluent community in the USA, and yet there’s serious trouble in paradise. Although this title is being marketed as a novel for young adult readers, a lot of adults will want to read it. It’s thought provoking and a real page-turner. Thank you to Net Galley and Random House for the DRC, which I read free in exchange for this honest review. I actually finished this book some time ago, but often I find that the most interesting, complex books are ones I will want to give considerable thought to before I review them; everything I have read and thought has to gel. So I apologize to the publishers for my tardiness, but it’s not a matter of not caring; maybe it’s a matter of caring too much.

My own background is in teaching inner-city teens and street kids, but Johnson makes a good case for attention toward the privileged yet sometimes neglected children of the upper middle class. This sophisticated story features a number of characters—teachers and students—in detail. We follow them from eighth grade into and to the end of high school. There’s baggage and drama left over from middle school that high school counselors, teachers, and administration won’t know about, and it carries over and influences events in ways no one can foresee.

One key player is Molly Nicholls, a brand new teacher whose age is closer to that of her students than to many of the teachers she works with, and who can’t tell the difference between caring for students, and becoming their peer; between the professional distance used by her colleagues to protect themselves both legally and emotionally, versus jaundiced burn-out. Molly is flattered when students come to her with complaints about other teachers, and she loves it when they tell her that she’s different than they are. But then she hits a crisis point that may abort her new career if mishandled; and the fact is, these new ‘friends’ of hers are going to graduate, while she’ll be left behind with the colleagues she’s alienated.

She just doesn’t get it.

That said, we also meet students that are stuck in a variety of unenviable positions. Young Abigail believes that she is special indeed; Mr. Ellison, everyone’s favorite teacher, spends extra time with her, drives her around in his car. His wife doesn’t understand him the way she does; she’s crushed when she realizes that he doesn’t intend to leave his wife, and that they have no real future together. She might be absolutely powerless were it not for the other power dynamic in place here, that of the socioeconomic disparity between the students’ families, who live in ostentatious luxury, and the teachers, who either commute a great distance, or live, as Miss Nicholls does, in a converted tool shed for an apartment. The relationships and the components that skew them are absolutely riveting.

Mill Valley kids don’t worry about where their next meals will come from; they drive cars far nicer than those of their teachers, and instead of allowances, they have bank accounts and credit cards. But what many of them lack is parental time and attention, and most of them lack boundaries. And adolescents really need boundaries; they need small, frequent reminders to check them when they cross an important line. Their teachers don’t dare provide the discipline and structure; they need these jobs. And the parents often won’t.

For example, there’s cyber-bullying. Tristan Bloch is a special needs student whose social skills often lead to miscues, and the primal behaviors of adolescents lock onto those miscues like sharks when there’s chum in the water. Miss Flax, a teacher that counsels Tristan, makes a horrible error when she suggests that he make a move toward Calista, a popular girl who’s going through a family crisis herself as her mother lies dying in a dark bedroom and her father comes unstuck. Calista turns to her friends to deal with Tristan’s unwanted advance. The whole ugly mess erupts on Face Book, and the result is tragic.

“Teachers like [Miss Flax] were always encouraging hopeless kids like Tristan to inject themselves into the social scene with ridiculous gestures—declarations of love, blind stabs at friendship—as if middle school were a safe haven in which to conduct these experiments, when in fact it was the most dangerous place on Earth.”

Then there are those like Dave Chu, a B student whose parents will be crushed if he isn’t admitted to an Ivy League college. Dave studies constantly, but he doesn’t have the talent to get where his parents need him to go, and they won’t hear of his entry into an ordinary California state college. Dave’s anxiety turns to panic, and ultimately he’s driven toward an extreme personal solution .

There’s a host of controversial material here, and also limitless potential for students’ reactions to what’s provided. I can see parents offering their child with a copy to read, and I can also see other parents hot-footing it to their child’s middle or high school to demand its removal from the curriculum or even from the library shelves. One thing’s for sure though: it’s generated a lot of advance buzz, and that buzz will only get louder with publication. It’s meaty, complicated, and an unmissable read for parents of adolescents, as well as those considering entering the minefield of teaching.

You can buy this book January 10, 2017, and you should. Highly recommended!

This novel was quite sad - and utterly believable. Johnson is able to illustrate a group of teenagers from multiple sides - the bullies are multifaceted, with parents who love them (or neglect them) ambitions, difficulties and the actions they believe will make them cool can have disastrous consequences.

I think this is an important book for both teens and parents to read - it can open a valuable door to discussion for whatever peer group you see your child in - the loner, the popular kid, the art kid...they are all still kids - they need guidance and understanding and the ability to trust someone who is going to have their best interests at heart.

I received this book from Net Galley for an unbiased review.

I really loved this book! Random House Publishers always does a fantastic job of finding the best books and authors and i was not disappointed at all! This book was fascinating and well written! A true round of applause to the author for such a captivating read! 4 stars from me!

Is a wealthy, privileged high school the most dangerous place on earth? While that may be disputed, there is no denying that to many teenagers, the high school years are incredibly tough, and can certainly feel like the end of the world. This novel - written in short vignettes that offers a glimpse into multiple character's POV - follows a group of teens from a traumatic event in 8th grade through high school graduation. The teen perspective is balanced out by the chapters from the POV of Ms. Molly Nicolls, a young, new teacher at the wealthy Marin County high school featured in the novel.

The setting is the definition of privilege on steroids. Wealthy suburban enclave, where teens have their own credit cards, BMWs, and little to no parent supervision. Lindsey Lee Johnson did an admirable job of using the setting as a starting place to explore the culture of wealthy, white privileged teens.

The format is where things go wrong. I really like the idea of the vignette chapters, but this book would definitely have fared better with a larger page count. Each chapter spends a brief amount of time focusing in on one of the characters. You hear that person's inner thoughts and perspective for one chapter, and then they seem to disappear back into semi-anonymity. This could have worked extremely well if the reader had the chance to come back to that person's POV a second or third time. What we're left with, instead, is the feeling of incompletion and not knowing what lies beneath the surface. Take Abigail, for example, we see her chapter towards the beginning of the novel, yet the ramifications of what take place in "her story" carry throughout the rest of the book. But her voice is lost during the remaining 75% of the book. David Chu was another character that I really wish I could have heard more about. The same goes for Calista, who we hear from at the beginning and the end, and out of all the teens, was most deeply and sincerely affected by her role in the tragedy that takes place at the start of the story.

The characters in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth are all flawed, and Johnson does an excellent job at getting to the heart of the culture of affluency, and the impact it has on kids raised in such a setting, who are rarely denied anything by their parents.

I do, however, have one major problem with the story. Part of me feels that the initial set up: cyberbullying and the resulting teen suicide, was done for its shock factor. The first chapter was heartbreaking, but at no point in the rest of the story was the awfulness of the bullying behavior addressed in a meaningful way. In fact, the "trauma" for the kids who engaged in the cyberbullying was used as justification for their selfish and cruel behavior in high school. Not cool.
In regards to the audience, I have seen this book listed as both YA contemporary and adult contemporary. I think it falls more into the adult genre, despite the protagonist's ages.

Would I recommend it? Yes. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth has flaws, just like the student's within the pages, but it is a thought-provoking, quick read. I would also add a trigger warning for the way that it handles bullying.