Isabella's Not Dead
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A hilarious and thought-provoking murder mystery about the death of a friendship, and one woman’s quest to track down the best friend who disappeared, for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette.
Isabella’s NOT dead.
That’s what Gwen tells anyone who asks about the friend who ghosted them all fifteen years ago. But if Isabella’s not dead, then where is she? And why did she leave, just when Gwen needed her most?
Freshly fifty-three, out of a job, and with children who are starting to fly the nest, Gwen decides to turn detective. Setting out to solve the mystery, Gwen embarks on an adventure across England—then across Europe—that will test her marriage and put her on a collision course with reluctant acquaintances, a mother-in-law best described as eccentric, and a rabbit hole full of clues. But Isabella’s not the only one who’s lost.
A tale of deep, frayed friendship, fractured memories, and skewed perspectives, Isabella’s Not Dead is the story of one woman’s quest to reclaim her best friend—and herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sparkling latest from Morrey (The Love Story of Missy Carmichael) follows a woman with boundary issues and too much time on her hands as she searches for a long-lost friend. After spending a weekend in the country with friends from school, Gwen, 53, becomes obsessed with tracking down her former bestie Isabella, who fell out of touch with their friend group 15 years earlier. She visits Isabella's reserved parents, and their cryptic comments (Isabella "values her privacy.... After everything that happened"), coupled with the espionage podcast she's been listening to, convince her that Isabella is a spy. Consumed by the case and annoyed with her neglectful husband, she follows a lead to Rome. As she gets closer to the truth, she learns as much about her own weaknesses and preconceptions as she does about Isabella, and she begins to find her way toward a life of "color and vibrancy and dynamism and excitement." With its wild goose chase plot and quirky cast of characters, including Isabella's "modest, restrained, and faintly apologetic" parents and Gwen's mother-in-law, "a gold-plated, X-rated, permanently aerated March Hare," the novel moves briskly along, and there's plenty of wisdom about long-term friendship and midlife crises beneath the fizzy surface. It's a rewarding tale of second chances.
