Goodreads

Release date: January 16, 2024

Publisher: Minotaur

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Synopsis:

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can’t say no—something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It’s a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she’s been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered… and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

A tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal—another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

Review:

If a thriller explores toxic female friendships I’m always gonna read it so that’s all I needed to know before I started this one. I also have a good track record going with the author, I enjoyed her two previous books, but I will say her previous ones were slightly better for me than this one. BUT! This is still worth a read in my opinion because a good thriller is getting harder and harder to come by anymore. Anyway, the college setting was strong for me here as well as the aforementioned female friend group with young women who were well drawn and characterized by the author. There are some really good twists too that I didn’t totally see coming, so overall this was another solid read from a trusted author.

Overall rating: 4/5

Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.