Bittersweet

By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

One perfect family.
Too many perfect lies.

Small-town girl Mabel Dagmar is out of her depth. At her elite East Coast college, unversed in the nuances of casual privilege, she is ignored, especially by her dormmate, Ev Winslow, whose pedigree disguises a chequered past. Then out of nowhere Ev softens and Mabel finds herself entering the world of the elite, with an invitation to the Winslows’ private estate, Winloch, that very summer.

Days spent swimming in watery coves evaporate into nights at glamorous cocktail parties. And as the formality melts away with one Winslow brother in particular, Mabel is left to think that her summer has all but become a golden dream.

But when Mabel looks a little closer at the Winslows, probing beneath their glossy exterior, what she uncovers in their past is almost as shocking as what she finds out about their present. Beneath the beauty is a rotten core.

And not everyone is quite as they seem…

Format: Hardback
Release Date: 05 Jun 2014
Pages: 400
ISBN: 978-0-00-753664-1
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is the author of three novels, including The Effects of Light and Set Me Free, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, for the best book of fiction by an American woman published in 2007. A recipient of the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, she lives and writes in Brooklyn and Vermont.

”'An engrossing summer blast” - MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD, bestselling author of Seating Arrangements

”'A beach read with lots of grisly twists” - DAILY MAIL

”'Beautifully written… an eeriness about it that keeps you gripped right up until the last page” - HEAT

”'Evokes Gone Girl with its exploration of dark secrets and edge-of-your-seat twists” - ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

‘Gripping, beguiling and beautifully written… a page turner that chills as it intoxicates. Miranda Beverly-Whittemore has created a family so dangerously enthralling that the more we learn of their greed and bloodlust, the more we aspire to belong’KATE CHRISTENSEN, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of The Great Man and Blue Plate Special -

‘Part coming-of-age story, part riveting mystery, Bittersweet is a tantalizing tale of an outsider thrust into a glittering world of immense privilege and suspect morals. With a narrator torn between uncovering one family's dark secrets and protecting her own, Bittersweet brilliantly explores the complicated question of what price any of us would pay to seize the life of our dreams’KIMBERLY MCCREIGHT, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia -