A Girl Like Us
A Novel
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Succession meets Saltburn in a crackling locked-room thriller of inconceivable wealth, unchecked power, and the secrets poised to bring a powerful family down.
It’s 2004 and former reality TV star and party girl Maya Miller has just married the most eligible bachelor on the planet: Colin Sterling, of the globally famous Sterling family whose history of aristocratic titles and land holdings rival a British royal and whose media empire is comparable to the Murdochs. To some, Maya represents the American dream. To others, a gold digger. But when Colin’s cousin Arianna, the heiress to the family’s immense fortune, is found murdered, Maya is thrust into the spotlight: first as she is revealed to be the next heiress to the fortune, and then as the prime suspect.
Swiftly, the entire Sterling family goes into lockdown at Silver House, the family’s ancestral estate in the English countryside. They’re told it’s for their own safety—but Maya becomes convinced that it's not to keep threats out, but to keep secrets in. Now, she has no choice but to find and expose the truth hidden within the Sterling family, and why Arianna, a girl she had never met, chose her to take her place. But Maya has secrets of her own. And she knows that in order to survive the Sterlings, she'll have to beat them at their own game.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McLoughlin, a pseudonym for YA author Anna Godbersen (the Luxe series), delivers an uneven thriller about a reality TV star who marries into a Murdoch-like family. Maya Miller ditches her dissolute reputation when she meets and falls for Colin Sterling, an heir to the powerful Sterling media empire. The pair quickly get married, but their Mexico honeymoon is interrupted by a summons to England, where Colin learns that his cousin, Arianna, who controls the family fortune, has been murdered. Like all the Sterling spouses, Maya is excluded from initial discussions about the fate of the funds—until the Sterlings learn that Arianna's will inexplicably leaves control of all assets to Maya. Shocked, Colin's parents and siblings struggle to find a way forward, while Maya tries to uncover the reason behind Arianna's bequest and guard certain secrets of her own. It's a tantalizing setup, but Maya's motivations grow increasingly nonsensical as the narrative wears on, and a series of late-stage revelations feel more like desperate hail Marys than well-motivated twists. There's a certain amount of fun to be had with the Sterling family's squabbling, but for the most part, this squanders its potential.
