The Girls Weekend

Jody Gehrman

Crooked Lane, 2020

Agent: Jill Marr

For fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley, a riveting locked-room mystery about five college friends eager to reunite after years apart--only to be ripped apart again when their host's disappearance unearths dark secrets and old grudges.

Their reunion just became a crime scene . . .

June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie--and her husband, June's former crush--but agrees to go.

The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone's a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie's husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.

A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise, this brooding, atmospheric novel will keep you guessing as each twist reveals a new possibility. It will remind you of friendships hidden in the depths of your own past, and make you wonder how well you really know the people you've loved the longest.

Reviews:

"A heart-pounding thriller that will have you guessing until the very end! Gehrman's taut who-dunnit, The Girls Weekend, pulses with fear, suspicion, and the disturbing question of how well we really know each other. Not to be missed." 
Elle Marr, author of The Missing Sister

"A pulse-pounding thriller...Clear your schedule, because once you pick The Girls Weekend up, you won’t  be be able to set it down."
Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, authors of The Two Lila Bennetts

"[An] exhilarating, atmospheric thriller...With dazzling prose and an eerily beautiful setting, The Girls Weekend delivers some ugly but necessary truths, revealing what can happen when long-simmering tensions finally explode.”
Megan Collins, author of The Winter Sister

"From its irresistible first sentence to the final page, The Girls Weekend is a captivating who-done-it and a tour de force thriller. Gehrman gets at the heart of secrets, lies and suspicions, asking how much we really know about our closest friends—and ourselves. Simply unputdownable."
Paula Treick DeBoard, critically acclaimed author of Here We Lie and The Drowning Girls