Bright and Tender Dark
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
An exquisitely written novel about a murder on a college campus and its aftermath twenty years later.
"Anyone who's ever been obsessed by a crime story will find a facet of themselves in this wise, compelling, and gripping book." - Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites
Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, those who knew Karlie-and those who just knew of her-remain consumed by her death. Among them is her freshman-year roommate, Joy, now middle-aged and mid-divorce, living in the same college town and desperate for a new beginning. When she stumbles upon a twenty-year-old letter from Karlie, Joy becomes convinced the man in prison for her murder was wrongfully convicted. Soon she is diving deep into the dark world of internet conspiracy theorists and amateur sleuth blogs and bouncing off others touched by the long, sensational aftermath of this crime. They include KC, the trans night manager at the building where Karlie was killed; Sheri, the mother of the man serving time; and Jacob Hendrix, the charming professor with whom, Joy knows all too well, Karlie was romantically entangled before her death.
Jumping between 2019 and 1999, Bright and Tender Dark takes us from the era of Reddit threads and online obsession to the evangelism-infused culture of the late '90s to reveal what really happened to Karlie. It is a compulsively readable, prismatic literary debut that brilliantly mines the mythology of murder, the power of urban legend, and the psychological urge to both protect and exploit what you love but cannot have.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pearson's rich debut murder mystery gathers potency from its portrait of middle-aged millennial angst and Y2K-era misogyny. In 2019, 20 years after Joy Brunner's freshman year college roommate, Karlie Richards, was brutally murdered, the mom of two discovers an unopened letter from Karlie, written just before her death, tucked into an old book. The cryptic letter's contents send Joy down a rabbit hole of true crime message boards and conspiracy theories, spurring her to conduct an obsessive investigation into the people closest to Karlie back at the University of North Carolina—including a professor who pursued dubious relationships with both girls. From there, Pearson rewinds back to 1999 and follows 18-year-old Karlie in the months leading up to her death. The past and present-day story lines converge as Joy's investigation reaches a boiling point in the tense finale. The plot is solidly constructed but not quite exceptional. Where Pearson shines is in her palpable evocation of both decades, and her rendering of the challenges Joy and Karlie face as women. Pearson's gift for texture and emotional resonance mark her as a talent to watch.
