Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

'A slightly wordy but suspenseful tale of corruption and bad behavior among wealthy New Englanders.

'As the increasingly tragic story unfolds, the taste left in the reader's mouth is more likely to be sour than bittersweet.' - Publishers Weekly Beverly-Whittemore has crafted a page-turner riddled with stubborn clues, a twisty plot and beguiling characters.' - Kirkus

Before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.īut as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact - and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family's dark secrets and make Ev's world her own. On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century it's the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour. Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Suspenseful and cinematic, Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider's hunger to belong.

Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore