The Sea of Lost Girls

January 6, 2020
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.

February 14, 2020

Tess and Harmon Henshaw are both professors at Haywood, an elite boarding school in Boston. Tess's 17-year-old son, Rudy (from a previous relationship), is a student at Haywood and lives in a dorm on campus. When a text from Rudy comes at three o'clock in the morning, Can you come get me?, she knows something is terribly wrong. The next morning, her worst fears are confirmed when the headmaster (and her boss) informs her that student Lila, Rudy's girlfriend, is dead. Tess will do everything to protect her son, and while the police are gathering clues, she scrambles to uncover everything she can, and is shocked to discover Rudy may not be the only person of interest. Her husband, Harmon, also had a relationship with Lila. He was helping her research a historical paper about Haywood. Secrets and lies hidden for decades now threaten to be revealed, and the truth may be more complex than anyone imagined. VERDICT Another strong, well-plotted suspense novel from Goodman (The Lake of Dead Languages), this is recommended for psychological suspense collections. Women's fiction aficionados may also want to give it a try. [See Prepub Alert, 8/25/19.]--Cynthia Price, Francis Marion Univ. Lib., Florence, SC

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February 1, 2020
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)