Traitorous thriller Lie or Die announced as Lancashire Book of the Year 2025

Organised by Lancashire County Council, Lancashire Book of the Year is the longest running young people's regional book award in the country. Now in its 39th year, it remains one of the few book awards where young people themselves are entirely responsible for drawing up the shortlist and choosing the overall winner.

The award this year was won by the young adult thriller author A. J. Clack for her book Lie or Die.

This year, Year 9 pupils from 35 high schools took part in the judging process, with representation from across the whole of Lancashire, including Blackpool. The young judges started with a long list of 96 young adult fiction books, narrowing that down to a shortlist of 12 titles.

The county council's library service worked with eBook partner BorrowBox to ensure the judges had access to the shortlisted titles as eBooks as well as the physical copies in schools and libraries.

The judges were then tasked with selecting the overall winner, which was done via a confidential vote in June.

A. J. Clack said: "It's hard to express how much it means to me to have young adults read Lie or Die and enjoy it enough to vote it the winner. That it resonated with them as readers means the world. 

"To have such an overwhelmingly positive response from the very people you were writing for is the best validation a writer can have.

"I am so grateful and honoured to have been judged the winner of this prestigious award, from such an amazing shortlist of books, and would like to thank each student judge for their vote and their support."

Lie or Die tells the story of a group of ten strangers trapped in a TV studio as they try to uncover the traitorous agent in the ultimate fight for survival. The book has been compared to the hit reality BBC TV show, The Traitors, where contestants also play a game of detection, backstabbing, and trust.

Both Lie or Die and The Traitors are based on Mafia, also known as Werewolf, a social deduction game created in 1986 by Dimitry Davidoff. A. J. Clack said she originally wrote Lie or Die in 2021, well before The Traitors first aired in 2023.

"It was amazing to compare how we had both independently interpreted the original Mafia game into a story format. It was a real Zeitgeist moment," she said.

"It's interesting to see how the show introduced a Detective character into later seasons – I wonder whether Lie or Die was an influence for them!"

Lancashire Book of the Year was the first regional book award for children when it was originally launched in 1987. It was won that year by Philip Pullman, who went on to have great success with the His Dark Materials trilogy, and has previously been won by authors including Malorie Blackman, Anthony Horowitz and Sarah Crossan.

For the past 25 years the award has been sponsored by UCLan.

A celebration event for Lancashire Book Of The Year 2025 was held earlier this month, where Lie or Die was announced as this year's winner.

Cllr Alf Clempson, chairman of Lancashire County Council, with the 12 shortlisted authors

County Councillor Matthew Salter, cabinet member for Education and Skills, said:

"Lancashire Book of the Year is a brilliant award that enables young adults across the county to share their love of reading.

"Studies have shown that children who enjoy reading and read regularly reap the benefits in many areas including academically, socially and in their wellbeing.

"Thank you to everyone who took part in this year's judging process. I also want to give a huge congratulations to A. J. Clack and to all of our shortlisted authors."

Find out more about Lancashire County Council libraries and the Lancashire Book of the Year at https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/libraries-and-archives/libraries/lancashires-book-of-the-year/