IMAGINARY STRANGERS

Imaginary Relatives would be a more exact title for this chilling kickoff to Kent’s Dangerous Strangers series.

Camille Prescott is a sociopath. She doesn’t love her perfect husband, Will, or her children, 6-year-old Georgiana and 4-year-old Jackson. Instead, she does such a conscientious job of faking love that she’s taken in her family and everyone else. And her lifelong masquerade isn’t really Camille’s fault, for, as her therapist back in Chicago once told her, “sociopaths were made, but psychopaths were born,” and Camille was made by Lucinda Nichols, her monstrously abusive mother. Persuading Will to relocate to San Diego without telling him that her motive is getting away from Lucinda, Camille settles into an artfully simulated routine that’s disrupted when Georgie tells her that in addition to Bestie, her imaginary friend, she’s made another buddy at school. Imaginary, as Georgie calls her, bears a striking resemblance to Imogen Carrey, a new teacher’s aide at Ocean Vista Elementary School, but an even more disturbing resemblance to Lucinda. Alarmed at the possibility that her mother has found her and discovered a way back into her life, Camille methodically follows Imogen, hoping to establish a link between her and Lucinda. The result of her aggressive defensive maneuvers threatens to turn the people who’ve supported her in the past, especially Will and his well-born mother, against her. Given Camille’s troubled history and lack of true emotional affect, who’s going to believe her when things go calamitously wrong?

A pitiless probing of a heroine many readers will take to their hearts despite the absence of one of her own.