In the dead-end town of Carp, graduating seniors play a secret, illegal game each summer called Panic. Fueled by money quietly collected from every student all year, the winner walks away with a life-changing pot — more than sixty thousand dollars, enough to escape a town that offers its young people almost nothing. But the game's challenges are brutal and escalating, and every year they leave someone hurt, or worse.
Heather Nill never planned to play. Reeling from a breakup and desperate for a way out of her mother's chaotic house, she throws herself into the game almost by accident. Dodge Mason enters with a colder purpose: a secret score to settle that has nothing to do with the money. As the challenges grow more dangerous — and as loyalties, friendships, and a tentative romance are tested — the two competitors are pushed toward a reckoning with fear itself.
Lauren Oliver's Panic is a taut, atmospheric YA thriller about poverty, courage, and the reckless things people will risk for a shot at freedom. Told in alternating perspectives, it was later adapted by Oliver into an Amazon Prime series.