Publisher: William Morrow
Published: September 14, 2021
Source: Netgalley via Publisher
Summary:
A pulse-pounding and deviously dark debut, written with the psychological acuity and emotional punch of Luckiest Girl Alive and All the Missing Girls, that explores the hungry, angry, dark side of girlhood and dares to ask what is most dangerous to a woman: showing the world what it wants to see, or who she really is?
What did you do?
Growing up in Liberty Lake, Minnesota, Mary was chubby, awkward, and smart. Earning a scholarship to an Ivy League school was her ticket out; she was going to do great things and never look back. Three years later, “Ivy League Mary” is back—a thinner, cynical, and restless failure. Kicked out of Cornell at the beginning of senior year, she won’t tell anyone why. Working at the local grocery store, she sees familiar faces from high school and tries to make sense of the past and her life.
When beautiful, magnetic Olivia Willand, a rising social media star, goes missing, Mary—like the rest of Liberty Lake—becomes obsessed. Best friends in childhood, Mary and Olivia haven’t spoken in years. Everyone admired Olivia, but Mary knows better than anyone that behind the Instagram persona hid a willful, manipulative girl with sharp edges. As the world worries for perfect, lovely Olivia, Mary can’t help but hate her. She also believes that her disappearance is tied to another missing person—a nineteen-year-old girl named DeMaria Jackson whose disappearance has gone under the radar.
Who was the true Olivia Willand, and where did she go? What happened to DeMaria? As Mary delves deeper into the lives of the two missing girls, old wounds bleed fresh and painful secrets threaten to destroy everything.
Maybe no one is really a nice girl, after all.
My thoughts:
There’s just something so appealing about picking up a debut novelist’s book. There are no expectations because you don’t know what the writer’s style is, so you can just jump into the book and enjoy it for what it is. And that is exactly what I did here…and bonus points for it being a thriller that involves missing girls. I love those types of stories!
This book totally grabbed my attention from the beginning and never really let up. I loved that the tension and suspense slowly build over the course of the book and that there is this sense of unreliability from just about everyone we meet. There are definitely mean girl vibes here, yet it is much darker.
This is one of those books where I definitely didn’t like many of the characters but I needed to know what happened to those missing girls and I really wanted to know why Mary was expelled from school. It’s talked around many times but we aren’t given the reason until much later in the book. This kept me glued to the pages because like a car wreck that you just need to see, I needed to know what had happened that would force her to return to the last place she really wanted to go.
There are so many addicting parts to this story that combine to make a great read. While it starts off as a slow burn, it eventually picks up pace with twists that keep you flipping the pages to see what comes next. It delves into some heavy topics that the author handles with ease and for that alone, I am so excited to see what she writes next. She is definitely one to keep an eye on!
