Precious Thing
*Starred Review* When they met in high school, awkward Rachel and coveted beauty Clara formed an unlikely, albeit airtight, bond. Years later, Rachel has bloomed into a successful crime-news correspondent and Clara is a free-spirited artist with a hefty inheritance cushion. Life has intervened, and they see each other rarely, so Rachel feels obligated to drive down from London when Clara arranges an evening out with old classmates. But Clara is nowhere to be found that evening. Clara’s a bit flaky, so Rachel dismisses the incident until she arrives at a Brighton police press conference and discovers she’s meant to cover a report of a missing person: Clara. In the coming weeks, Rachel’s initial devastation shifts to suspicion as she becomes the prime suspect and begins to believe that Clara is framing her. The narrative takes the form of Rachel’s confidential letter to Clara, full of inside jokes and hinted evils. It’s a winning method of spine-tingling foreshadowing that frames the constant question: Has Rachel gone mad and blocked her connection to the disappearance, or has Clara’s affection turned to something darker? Debut author McBeth’s Gone Girl–style psychological thriller will be a widespread hit for fans of dark drama with questionable narrators, including S. J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep (2011), Sabine Durrant’s Under Your Skin (2013), and Karen Perry’s The Innocent Sleep (2014). --Christine Tran