Author Blaire Barrington and doctor Kate English were best friends until Kate's wedding, when Blaire and Kate fought and Blaire was replaced as Kate's maid of honor. They have nothing to do with each other until years later when Kate's mother, Lily, is brutally murdered. Kate and Blaire had been such close friends that they spent holidays and weekends together and during their last year of high school, Blaire lived with Kate's rich family. So when Kate's mother is murdered, Kate reaches out to Blaire and asks her to come be with her.
Once the funeral is over and Kate starts getting threatening texts and finds small, dead, birds/animals with warning notes, she needs Blaire even more. Blaire is considered an outsider by many, as even though she is a wealthy, famous author now, her more humble beginnings have never allowed her to break the wall of Kate's high society world. Blaire is determined to find out who killed Lily, a women that Blaire loved like a mother. Blaire doesn't care who she rubs the wrong way in her search, while at the same time Kate is beginning to trust fewer and fewer people other than Blaire. Since Blaire is an author for murder mysteries, her research has given her the tools she needs to investigate Lily's murder, whether her investigating skills are welcome or not.
In the past, Kate had mental issues when a boyfriend died before their senior year of college. Blaire helped Kate then too so during this time of stress, Kate becomes more and more dependent on Blaire, while turning others away. Blaire thinks that the stress of Lily's death, added to the threats, are pushing Kate to a breakdown she may never recover from. At the same time, there seem to be references that Blaire might resent Kate's life long wealth and birthright into a life that Blaire would have loved to have been born into. Blaire even looks down on Kate when, right after her mom's death and while getting many threats, Kate doesn't use the type of place settings that Kate's mom would have used. For how much Blaire hates this judgmental society, she hypocritically judges those around her.
The book is full of suspects and even those who might not be suspects, in the murder of Lily, are up to no good, whether it's infidelity, betrayal, lies, cover ups...so many secrets abound. Kate can't trust her father, her husband, her long time financial adviser, Lily's longtime friend, no one really is trustworthy to Kate but Blaire. As things get more tense and the threats seem to indicate another disaster is near, Kate's world seems to be imploding around her.
I enjoyed the first part of the book a lot although at a certain point things began to seem too much. Too many suspects, too many details, too many motives. I'm a reader who likes loose ends cleared up but it seemed every one of the characters has too much to say and I do think the book could have used more focus. I began to feel bogged down by too much character thinking and too much character talking. The ending of the book even goes on farther than seemed necessary. I will say that I enjoyed how some characters that I didn't like at first became some of my favorite characters at the end of the book. And then there were the characters that were rich and rotten at the beginning and stayed rich and rotten to the end. This really was quite the soap opera with both physical and physiological threats. The book contained more twists and turns than a roller coaster.
Thank you to HarperCollins and Edelweiss for this ARC.