The Secret History meets Sharp Objects in this stunning debut about murder and glamour set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school.
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly—a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession—but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.
Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.
Compulsively readable, Lili Anolik’s debut novel combines the verbal dexterity of Marisha Pessl’s Special Topic in Calamity Physics and the haunting atmospherics and hairpin plot twists of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me.
“Dark Rooms warrants an urgency that I haven’t experienced since reading Nancy Drew in elementary school. It had me pining for more explanations, more dialogue, more, more, more, in a way that I don’t tend to experience often as an adult. . . . Simply put, Anolik brilliantly strings us along—which is what makes her first novel so rewarding to read, and so upsetting to finish.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and fast—a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide-note confession—but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister Grace to accept the case as closed. Dropped out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying the real killer.
“The most exciting new writer I’ve come across in a long time, Lili Anolik gives us one hell of a first novel. Dark Rooms is an elegant work of crime fiction with a plot as well drawn as the characters who inhabit it. It’s a fine murder mystery as well as an exploration of loss and identity—and how through one, we sometimes grope our way to the other. . . . Think Megan Abbott meets Twin Peaks.” —Gregg Hurwitz, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Look Back
“Suspenseful, sad and, shattering. . . . Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Anolik’s debut will haunt you.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The opening sentence hooks.”—Bret Easton Ellis
“Insightful [and] complex. . . . Anolik’s haunting debut is tough to put down and will stay with you for a long time. The author’s characters and tone recall Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.”—Library Journal (starred review)
"A Twin Peaks-twisted murder mystery."
