Dear Future Me
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“This is a winner.”—Publishers Weekly
“Suspenseful and thought-provoking. I will read whatever O’Connor writes next – she is the talent of a generation and this is the perfect book group thriller.”- Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time and Just Another Missing Person
You never know what will happen when you try to rewrite the past...
In 2003, Mr. Danler’s high school class got an assignment to write letters to their future selves. Twenty years later, they receive them in the mail.
Upon opening them, the students are shocked to find that their envelopes contain old secrets that threaten to expose the truth about the tragic death of one of their classmates. And when one letter makes the beautiful and successful Miranda jump off a cliff to her death, the small community is rocked to its core.
Stunned by what has happened and armed with a clue of her own, Miranda’s best-friend Audrey decides to track down her old classmates to get to the bottom of Miranda’s death. And in doing so, she sets off a chain of events that could expose the truth not just about one untimely death, but two.
From bestselling author Deborah O’Connor comes a searing thriller that exposes the grief, guilt, and secrets that riddle a small town, uncovering the far-reaching consequences of a decades-old tragedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Connor (The Captive) debuts with an enthralling dual-timeline mystery that links two tragedies, 20 years apart. In 2003, a teacher in the seaside English town of Saltburn, North Yorkshire, asks his sixth-form students to write letters to their future selves after 17-year-old Ben Spellman dies accidentally on a class trip to the Lake District. Twenty years later, the students receive their old letters. The same day, Miranda Breivart is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. The police believe her death is a suicide, but her close friend Audrey—whose dreams of attending Cambridge fell through and who now works as a house cleaner for some of her wealthy former classmates—suspects foul play. Realizing only she cares enough to learn the truth, Audrey launches an investigation that soon casts doubt both on Ben's long-ago death and the peaceful facade of a town she thought she knew. Early on, O'Connor writes that aspirations can be "a weight around your neck from which you can never wriggle free," and she explores that idea to its fullest, with Audrey's quest taking on a poignant, tragic quality from its first moments. Themes of moral relativism and class difference are equally well developed. This is a winner.