Bright and Tender Dark
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
"Pearson bursts onto the scene with a gripping murder mystery fueled by the craziness of the internet." -Debutiful
Days after the dawn of the new millennium, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades later, her freshman-year roommate Joy, mid-divorce and desperate for a new beginning, stumbles on an old letter from Karlie and becomes convinced the man in prison for her murder didn't kill her. It was someone else.
Moving between the doomsaying of 90s evangelical culture and the dark world of internet conspiracies, Bright and Tender Dark is a compulsively readable, twisty, and prismatic debut that brilliantly mines the mythology of a murder and the urge to exploit what we love but can't have.
"Smart, assured, and absorbing." -Booklist (starred review)
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.
