BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSMars Matthias is a gender fluid rising senior who left Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy under bad circumstances four years ago and swore never to go back. Then Mars's twin sister Caroline dies after a sudden, violent episode at home, just days after fleeing that same camp in the middle of the night, and doctors trace it to a brain tumor. Grieving and unconvinced that the official story explains everything, Mars talks their parents into sending them back to Aspen for the rest of the summer, determined to learn who Caroline really was in her last weeks there. Settling into the boys' cabin, clashing with a bully named Callum, and finding an unexpected friend in a counselor named Wyatt, Mars keeps circling back to Cabin H, home to the tight, glamorous group of girls everyone calls the Honeys, the same girls who were once Caroline's closest friends. The longer Mars stays, the more Aspen's cheerful traditions start to feel like a cover for something the Honeys know and are not saying.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Honeys
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Honeys. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book do twins crash through a chandelier after a banister snaps beneath them?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Caroline trips into Mars at the top of the stairs during the attack and the railing gives way. Caroline hits the floor first and dies, and within days the Matthias parents have quietly replaced both the banister and the chandelier.
- First half
In what book does a camper apply three coats of lip gloss so the whole cabin will notice?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
After beating Callum, Mars has the boys' respect for the first time and spends it immediately, putting on gloss where everyone can see and then asking how it looks. Mars calls the shaky silence that follows the sound of a small world getting a little bigger.
- First half
In what book does a ghost story end with campers seeing themselves waving from inside their own cabin?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Ray tells the Cabin People story at the Outbound campfire, about counselors who scared girls with shadow puppets until the shadows started appearing on their own. It gets a silent ovation, and it quietly describes what is actually happening at Aspen.
- Second half
In what book does a camper accidentally set a butterfly on fire with a glass of water?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Mars is using the glass to explain higher dimensions to the girls and lets the sunlight focus through it for too long. Bria calmly holds up a hand and the butterfly is alive again on her knuckle, which tells Mars far more than the lesson did.
- Second half
In what book does a camper steal a key fob to break into a converted library lab?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Unable to sleep, Mars takes Wyatt's keys off the hook in Bear Hut and searches the internet for deaths and missing persons around the camp. The search turns up a pattern of people who vanish in the woods one per summer, all of them guilty of something.
- Near the end
In what book does a teen grab an antique calculator to smash an attacker's hand?
✓ Answer
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Both of them dive for the hive tool and Wyatt gets there first, so Mars grabs the heavy Mayfair calculator instead. It is the last thing Caroline ever gave her twin, and Mars wonders whether she chose it for exactly this.
