The sea of lost girls A novel

Carol Goodman

Book - 2020

"Tess has worked hard to keep her past buried, where it belongs. Now she's the wife to a respected professor at an elite boarding school, where she also teaches. Her seventeen-year-old son, Rudy, whose dark moods and complicated behavior she's long worried about, seems to be thriving: he has a lead role in the school play and a smart and ambitious girlfriend. Tess tries not to think about the mistakes she made eighteen years ago, and mostly, she succeeds. And then early one morning she gets a text at 2:50 AM: it's Rudy, asking for help. When Tess picks him up she finds him drenched and shivering, with a dark stain on his sweatshirt. Four hours later, Tess gets a phone call from the Haywood school headmistress: Lila Zelle...r, Rudy's girlfriend, has been found dead on the beach, not far from where Tess found Rudy just hours before. As the investigation into Lila's death escalates, Tess finds her family attacked on all sides. What first seemed like a tragic accidental death is turning into something far more sinister, and not only is Tess's son a suspect but her husband is a person of interest too. But Lila's death isn't the first blemish on Haywood's record, and the more Tess learns about Haywood's fabled history, the more she realizes that not all skeletons will stay safely locked in the closet" --Publisher description.

Saved in:

1st Floor Show me where

FICTION/Goodman Carol
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
1st Floor FICTION/Goodman Carol Checked In
Subjects
Genres
Thrillers (Fiction)
Published
New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Carol Goodman (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
"P.S. Insights, interviews & more ..." --Cover.
Physical Description
294, 16 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780062979636
9780062852021
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Here's another winning du Maurier-like thriller (after The Night Visitors, 2019) from New York Times best-selling author Goodman. Tess survived a harrowing past, but she has managed to keep it hidden and is now a teacher at Haywood, an elite boarding school on the coast of Maine. The school has its own troubling past, involving the disappearance of several girls. Tess' 17-year-old son, the nightmare-prone Rudy, who has always had a nose for darkness, seems to have finally come into the light after taking up with fellow student Lila Zeller. However, when Lila is found dead on a nearby beach, Tess has every reason to suspect Rudy and goes to extreme lengths to shield him from the police. Her husband, along with the school's longtime benefactor and a disgraced former faculty member, all become persons of interest. Much social-media witch-hunting ensues, set against a school production of The Crucible, providing clever modern parallels about the damage that can be done by teenagers with big imaginations. Beautifully drawn, especially the visit to the creepy little museum devoted to Haywood's past.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2020 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Tess, the unreliable narrator of this exciting, if flawed, psychological thriller from Mary Higgins Clark Award--winner Goodman (The Night Visitors), teaches English at Haywood, a prestigious boarding school on the Maine coast, where her 17-year-old son, Rudy, is a student. Early one morning, Rudy texts Tess asking her to pick him up near the beach. Tess finds Rudy in a bloodstained sweatshirt, and he reveals that he had a fight with his bright, go-getter fellow classmate and girlfriend, Lila. A few hours later, Tess receives a phone call from Haywood's headmistress informing her that Lila's body has been found on the beach. With a history of aggression, Rudy is a person of interest in Lila's murder, and his overbearing mother is desperate to protect him, even if it involves lying to the police and exposing dark secrets about her past concerning Rudy's father. Unfortunately, most of the characters, including the irritating Tess, grate, and the culprit's identity comes as no surprise. Still, readers will have a hard time putting this one down thanks to Goodman's storytelling powers. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved