The New Girl
A Novel
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3.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“This debut thriller reads like The Devil Wears Prada meets Single White Female. I couldn’t put it down.”—Catherine Steadman, author of Something in the Water and Mr. Nobody
She’s borrowed your life. But what if she decides to keep it?
Glamorous Margot Jones is the fashion editor at glossy magazine Haute. Pregnant with her first child, Margot’s carefully curated life is the object of other women’s envy—who wouldn’t want her successful career, loving husband, beautiful house, and stylish wardrobe?
Maggie, a freelance journalist, certainly knows she doesn’t measure up. But when she gets the temp job covering Margot’s maternity leave, Maggie seizes the chance to live a flashier life—even if it’s only for a few months.
But the simultaneous arrival of Margot’s baby and a brutal end to her oldest friendship sends Margot into a spiral of insecurity and suspicion; normal preoccupations of new motherhood turn into dark and frightening paranoia. Who is the vicious online troll mocking Margot’s facade of perfection and threatening to expose a dark secret she’s spent years concealing? Are Maggie’s newfound ambitions and plucky enthusiasm as innocent as they seem? And what happens when Margot is ready to return to her old life—especially if Maggie doesn’t want to leave?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Walker's searing debut follows the intertwined lives of three women. High-powered London fashion editor Margot Jones is headed for maternity leave, her pregnancy a few months behind her best friend Winnie Clough's. Maggie Beecher, Margot's handpicked temporary successor, proves far more adept at Margot's job than either imagined. When one character suffers a personal tragedy, Margot finds herself adrift and terrified of the future, Winnie refuses to see or speak to her for reasons related to the tragedy, and Maggie emerges as the darling of the fashion world. As Margot becomes increasingly jealous and paranoid, Winnie sets her sights on revenge, and Maggie schemes to make her temporary job permanent. Each woman's alternating narrative offers her own perspective on the unfolding events, from which no one escapes unscathed. The author, the fashion editor for The Times of London, movingly portrays the fragility of friendship and the corrosive effect of mistrust and recriminations in a wickedly funny psychological thriller that's in turn brutal and tender. Walker is off to a fine start.
