She Was the Quiet One

May 28, 2018
Campbell (It’s Always the Husband) sets this twisty thriller against an academic background. Twins Rose and Bel could not be more dissimilar; after their mother’s death, ambitious Rose is thrilled to be sent by their wealthy grandmother to boarding school at rigorous Odell Academy in New England, while Bel feels abandoned. Rose immediately excels academically while Bel becomes part of an older, trouble-making crowd. Both sisters are drawn to their faculty advisors, a married couple who are also their dorm parents. Readers learn straight off that one of the sisters will be murdered—but which one? And why? Overlapping narrative perspectives and shifting chronologies serve to heighten suspense but sometimes create tiresome redundancies, while the prolonged revelations not only of “who done it” but also “who got done” lead to some awkward moments in the novel’s first half. The final narrative twist also feels tacked-on and almost entirely unnecessary to the plot. Readers will nevertheless be drawn in to the novel’s intricate exploration of divided loyalties and the brittleness of trust. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

May 1, 2018
Orphaned twins Bel and Rose Enright find a home with their wealthy grandmother, but it's short-lived, as she soon packs them off to swanky Odell boarding school. Rose fares well there, but Bel, who is more rebellious, goes a different way. She falls in with the wrong crowd, and rumors swirl that she might win the contest to be first to seduce the school's dishy dorm head. From the start of this intriguing mystery, readers know that one of the twins has been found dead by the other, and the novel moves back and forth between the investigation and the time before the crime; it also switches character viewpoints, giving readers a multifaceted look at the circumstances surrounding the killing, with Campbell masterfully hiding vital details until the end. Though the story drags in the middle while various intrigues build, Campbell's skillful characterization and her shocking final twist make this follow-up to It's Always the Husband (2017) well worthwhile. Readers who enjoyed Simone St. James' boarding-school mystery, The Broken Girls (2018), should give this a try.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)