"Reader Vacker does a remarkable job.... Mystery and true crime fans will be drawn in and ultimately satisfied by this complex, tense tale read expertly by a talented narrator." —Booklist on All the Dangerous Things
A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.
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.
From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes 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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 16, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781250329561
- File size: 296376 KB
- Duration: 10:17:26
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
November 27, 2023
The latest from Willingham (All the Dangerous Things) is a cunning if somewhat implausible campus thriller. As Margot nears the end of her achingly lonely freshman year—a far cry from the adventurous one she’d imagined with her bestie, Eliza, who had died under suspicious circumstances weeks after their high school graduation—at South Carolina’s Rutledge College, she can’t fathom why Lucy Sharpe, one of the school’s most popular coeds, would invite her to room with her and her wingwomen in the historic off-campus house they’re renting for the summer. Still, Margot leaps at the offer, plunging into what turns out to be a maelstrom of secrets, mind games, and possibly murder. Despite her natural reserve, Margot clicks with the uninhibited Lucy, sliding into a sidekick role similar to the one she played with Eliza. However, as the summer’s booze-soaked partying with the neighboring fraternity winds on, Lucy’s darker side emerges, especially after the arrival of prospective frat pledge Levi Butler—Eliza’s old boyfriend, who was reportedly the last person to see her alive. Flash forward several months: Levi’s dead, Lucy has disappeared, and Margot’s narration has become increasingly unreliable. Though the twisty narrative grows far-fetched as it nears the climax, Willingham’s prose remains evocative, and her deep dive into the thorny nature of female friendship rings true. Though this doesn’t rank among the author’s best work, it’s still a gripping ride. -
AudioFile Magazine
College sophomore Margot mysteriously loses two best friends in the span of two years in this psychological thriller, which should be categorized as a YA audiobook. Narrator Karissa Vacker does her best with the material, which features voluminous scenes of postadolescent self-reflection that are hard to enjoy listening to if you are well past your twenties. Vacker is gifted at shifting her vocal register to believably voice the male characters, like the fraternity brothers who live next door to Margot, one of whom turns up dead. Although the characters are North Carolina natives and the Outer Banks location features prominently, Vacker never employs an accent. The final chapters are inventive and unexpected, but it takes some listening patience to get there. J.T. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
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