All that Glitters

September 16, 2013
From her first day at Oxford, Isabel Suarez-Octavio's classmates can tell she's something special. The daughter of Bolivian diplomats (or so she claims), Isabel is gorgeous, brilliant, and skilled at persuasion. She quickly makes the right friends, attends the right parties, and enrolls in the right organizations, using her influence to elevate her friend Chloe to the presidency of the Oxford Union debating society. After only a year, Isabel drops out to form her own communications firm, and it seems clear that she's destined for greatness as she launches the career of Britain's hottest new artist and carries on a passionate affair with a high-powered government official. But when a powerful, dangerous new client invites her to join him on his yacht, then turns up dead, Isabel's the prime suspect in a sensational murder case. Her Oxford friends rally to her side to help clear her name, but things become more complicated as they learn that Isabel isn't quite who she says she is. Ighodaro wastes nearly 200 pages on Oxford happenings and secondary characters, then disjointedly strands the Oxford crowd midbook to focus on Isabel's trial and backstory. Though the pace picks up from there, an implausible twist and an unsatisfactory resolution dull a promising premise.