YOU MAY NOW KILL THE BRIDE

A death at a bachelorette party makes a group of childhood friends question what they know in this adult debut.

Tansy, Lauren, Farah, Saskia, and Dominica have been friends since elementary school. Thick as thieves since Dominica saved the rest from a bully on the playground, they are now in their mid-30s and in very different places in life: Saskia married rich and lords it over the others. Dominica is a hotshot divorce lawyer, always on her phone. Lauren makes do at a makeup company while mooning over her ex-boyfriend (and Farah’s brother), Joss. Farah’s long-awaited wedding is coming up but has been overshadowed by Tansy’s last-minute whirlwind marriage to a man she barely knows. At Tansy’s bachelorette party, emotions are simmering when what seems to be a tragic accident leaves one of them dead. But as the accident starts looking like murder and the friends try to carry on with Farah’s wedding preparations, each begins to wonder if one of them may be more than she seems. The book is full of twists and turns, swiftly pushing forward while dropping in short flashbacks of the girls’ growing-up years to flesh out their relationships, and it’s hard not to want to know exactly what’s going on. It can be hard to follow, however, as the point of view changes between paragraphs, sometimes within the same sentence. Though the characters are drawn with real depth, they spend their time showing their disgust with each other while telling the reader how close they are. The only thing that seems to connect them is the duration of their relationships, not the quality. Their friendship can be hard to believe.

An interesting but hard-to-follow thriller.