Nice Girls

Are you a real chiller lover? A hard core fan of suspense? If so, have I got a book recommendation for you! Catherine Dang's debut novel, Nice Girls, is a roller coaster ride of a read that will leave you wondering if its two word title is an oxymoron.
As the story begins Mary, Dang's narrator, is living the nightmare that used to be her dream. In her senior year, less that two semesters away from an Ivy League diploma, the key to a prestigious career and a bright future, she's been expelled from Cornell for losing control of her temper and assaulting a freshman. As she waits for her father to pick her up word of the incident spreads lightning fast. Blood thirsty texts pile up on her phone. Her former friends have ghosted her.
Home is no safe haven. It's in a town where she was an outcast, a lonely, overweight girl shunned by her peers. Since she lost her mother to cancer early in life her father has been a distant, aloof, far from nurturing presence in her life. Now she's back in the place she vowed to escape, a place she fears she's stuck in forever, a gossipy town that will happily shred her if even one person discovers her secret.
But the town has some dark secrets of its own. The day after Mary returns a childhood frenemy of hers is reported missing. Olivia is a popular girl, a social media rising star, from a prominent family. News of her disappearance rapidly spreads, drawing not only only local but national media. Reward money is offered. Search parties look everywhere.
About a week later a badly mangled human arm is discovered on a beach. Dragging the lake turns up more severed body parts. People think they've discovered at least part of Olivia…
…only they're wrong. They belong to DeMaria, a teen who had disappeared just months earlier, a girl whose absence was deemed much less newsworthy. (Maybe because she was a poor Black single mother rather than a white, well connected social media darling?)
Mary is thinking serial killer. Then, searching social media for clues, she finds a post by DeMaria's mother on Facebook: "Liberty Lake police is full of shit!! My daughter did not run away, she was kidnapped and I'm tired of the news pulling this BS on my child. Police did not take action when I reported her missing this summer. Said she was a runaway, told me to wait…"
When the police refuse to consider that the two disappearances could be related Mary decides to take the matter into her own inexperienced, inept hands. If anything she's stirring up a hornets' nest, making some real enemies…
…perhaps someone with the power to reveal her own secrets or the actual serial killer.
If darkness has fallen when you get to the last chapters I'd advise you to wait til daylight to finish the book. But I suspect you'll be unable to put it down just like I was.
On a purrrsonal note I'm finally, for the first time since the stroke, able to post on a fairly regular basis. Now I'g going to work on rebuilding my numbers. I'm not talking viral or anything close to it. My goals are far more modest. I just want to get books that are diverse and inclusive into the hands of as many readers as possible. I think that's crucial at a time when so many people are trying to limit what we have access to and silence the authors they don't agree with. I'm planning an online and offline campaign. You can be part of it. If you like what you read on my blog please keep reading it, recommend it to your friends, and mention it online. You'll earn my undying gratitude.
A great big shout out goes out to you, my readers for whom I've kept this blog going well over a decade now.
Jules Hathaway