Vicious Little Darlings

May 15, 2011

"The brochure said nothing about angst-filled dorms or psychic roommates."

Instead of going to local UCLA, 17-year-old Sarah is spending the next four years at Wetherly, a fictional all-women's college in New England, all because her Nana caught her having sex with the most popular guy at her high school. Constantly substituting sex for love (so she doesn't end up miserable, like her absent parents), without female friends, slightly depressed and definitely insecure, she's the perfect victim. In this edgy debut thriller, the first-year student's not sure why she's drawn to her beautiful, narcissistic orphan roommate, Maddy, and Maddy's wealthy, enabling best friend, Agnes, but suddenly she's sharing an off-campus house and an injured deer (which readers won't know whether to laugh or cringe at) with them. And she's not sure why she stays even after she realizes that Maddy is a pathological liar, that equally manipulative Agnes is trying to pretend she's not in love with Maddy and that she's caught between the two housemates vying for each other's attention. It's a constant who's manipulating whom, with secrets, sexual tension and a Gypsy's deadly prediction always at the forefront, as the story's slow burn finally explodes. It's all given immediacy and subtle sarcasm through Sarah's first-person narration, which will have readers second-guessing throughout.

It's clear someone has to die, but just who it will be keeps readers wondering to the very end. (Thriller. 15 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011

Gr 10 Up-Sarah Weaver, 17, of Beverly Hills, CA, is dispatched to a women's college in Massachusetts after being found by Nana, her grandmother and guardian, in flagrante delicto with a high school guy. Arriving at Wetherly College, she meets her beautiful roommate, Maddy, and Maddy's friend Agnes. Soon the three girls decide to move off campus into a spacious house Agnes has rented, a house that becomes the setting for a disintegrating friendship triangle. Maddy, a needy orphan, is certain she will die young. Agnes is protectively in love with Maddy, and Sarah has a sexual encounter with Maddy's boyfriend. Secrets and lies ensue, creating a tightening spiral of deceitful alliances and emotional instability, and Sarah, as narrator, adds to the miscommunication by believing anything she is told. College life is negligible in the novel; instead, out-of-town trips in Agnes's Mercedes and the deepening drama at the shared house dominate the narrative. In her irrational state, Maddy believes that the death of someone else will add years to her own life and enlists Sarah to help her drown Agnes in the bathtub. But it is a handgun that brings down both Agnes and Maddy in the murder-suicide that concludes this tale of feminine relationships gone horribly wrong.-Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

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