S. F. Prescott

Filled with suspense!

Katherine Wood is a dreamer and schemer, a lover of boats and books and foreign locales. She prefers her water con gas, her meals al fresco, and her men with a large vocabulary. She often laughs, rarely lies, and never leaves her lovers at the bottom of wells.

Published July 9th, 2024.

When a young woman vanishes from her remote Greek island estate, her best friend races to find her, using clues found in the explosive manuscript she left behind.

There were so many elements I enjoyed about this book! A book within a book, friends to lovers, rich people getting into trouble in paradise, and unreliable female narrators. Even though it’s technically suspense, it really felt like there was a love story at the heart of this novel. It was a fun take on the genre and definitely had Gone Girl vibes. Entertaining, addictive, with sexual tension sprinkled throughout. The perfect beach read this summer!

I loved reading Gia’s manuscript as she logged her side of the story, the same way she’d done following a terrible tragedy when she saved her best friend, Abby, a decade prior. It was immersive and I enjoyed getting to know all the shady characters and their motives. Benny, her brother, was my favorite since he seemed to be the only sincere person in the book. It gripped me from beginning to end, trying to figure out the truth of what was going on, and I still don’t know. The old well on the property definitely created the most suspense for me overall.

My favorite character arcs were Benny and Abby, and their relationship. I was rooting for them the entire time. The ending left me hanging, not knowing exactly what happened, but it left it open for a possible sequel. The pace was steady until the end when it slowed, and Abby was settled into her new life.

For readers who enjoy complicated relationships, unreliable protagonists, exotic locations, and suspense.

Synopsis:

Gia and Abby have been friends since childhood, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. Now thirty, heiress Gia is back in Greece with her shiny new husband, entertaining glamorous guests with champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun, while bookish Abby is working fourteen-hour days as an attorney. When Gia invites Abby on an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to celebrate her birthday, Abby’s thrilled to reconnect.

But on the day of her flight, Abby receives an ominous email that threatens to unearth the skeletons of her past, and when she and Gia’s brother, Benny, arrive in Sweden, Gia isn’t there. Worried, Abby and Benny fly to Greece, where they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts the manuscript she penned, detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. Gia’s narrative reveals the dark truth about her provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of their seductive guests, a story almost too scandalous to be believed. But the pages end abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.

How much of Gia’s story is true? Where is she now? And will Abby find her before it’s too late?