Girls with Bright Futures
A Novel
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
"For those who couldn't stop reading about Lori Loughlin and Operation Varsity Blues, this suspenseful thriller about the lines moms are willing to cross to get their kids into college is for you."—Refinery29
"Book Club Winner."—Real Simple, Book Club Selection
"A thriller for the post-college-admission-scandal age."—PopSugar
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Parade Magazine, Newsweek, POPSUGAR, Refinery29, Brit + Co, and more!
Three women, three daughters, and a promise that they'll each get what they deserve...
College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their parents are ambitious. But when Stanford alerts the school it's allotting only one spot to EBA for their incoming class, three mothers discover the competition is more cutthroat than they could have imagined.
Tech giant Alicia turns to her fortune and status to fight for her reluctant daughter's place at the top. Kelly, a Stanford alum, leverages her PTA influence and insider knowledge to bulldoze the path for her high-strung daughter. And Maren makes three: single, broke, and ill-equipped to battle the elite school community aligning to bring her superstar down.
That's when, days before applications are due, one of the girls suffers a near-fatal accident, one that doesn't appear to be an accident at all.
As the community spirals out of control, three women will have to decide what lines they're willing to cross to secure their daughters' futures…and keep buried the secrets that threaten to destroy far more than just college dreams.
The perfect book club read with a suspense bite, Girls with Bright Futures combines the college admissions scandal with the edge of Big Little Lies, the snark of Class Mom, and the schadenfreude of watching the elite implode.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Getting into college can be hard, but this pageturner makes it feel like murder. When word gets out that Stanford will take only one graduate from Seattle’s elite Elliott Bay Academy, the war is on. But just as the prep school’s competitive moms start sharpening their perfectly manicured claws, a suspicious accident leaves one of the school’s most promising students clinging to life. We were fully on board for the wild accusations and shocking twists that follow and couldn’t put Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman’s mystery down until we’d discovered which mom—tech exec Alicia, legacy alum Kelly, or hard-luck single mom Maren—was ruthless enough to commit a crime and emerge victorious. A darkly funny tale of class, power, and privilege, Girls with Bright Futures is a wickedly smart read that explores the games scheming parents play.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dobmeier and Katzman's suspenseful debut, a shrewd comedy of manners, focuses on three women whose daughters attend Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy, a prep school "positioned as a pipeline to elite colleges." Imperious Alicia Stone, "a millionaire many hundreds of times over," is one of the most powerful women in the tech industry. Kelly Vernon makes up for her lower financial status with manic, malice-tinged zeal, which includes posting erroneous information on Twitter. Capable, low-key single-mom Maren Pressley, Alicia's long-time personal assistant, has an academically gifted daughter, Winnie, who's aiming for Stanford, much to the chagrin of the more competitive mothers, whose daughters are also applying to Stanford. When Winnie is seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver, the police refuse to believe Maren's suggestion that the incident might be connected to the aggressive race for acceptance to a top university. After years of silent subservience, Maren decides to tell the police a big lie as part of her campaign to ensure Winnie's safety and her future. The exhilarating narrative speeds along to a satisfying conclusion. This is an unputdownable morality tale for our times.
