Friends and Liars
A Novel
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3.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From “edge-of-your-seat suspense” (Booklist) author Kit Frick comes an insidious thriller about four estranged friends trapped in a powerful family’s deadly games at a luxe estate in the Italian countryside.
It’s been five years since heiress Clare Monroe tragically died on New Year’s Eve at her family’s opulent Italian palazzo. Since that time, her college friends have harbored a dark secret—their lies and betrayals led to Clare’s untimely death.
What happened that fateful night was a horrible accident, but Luca, Harper, Sirina, and David are guilty, nonetheless. And their desperate decision to conceal the truth destroyed their once-close bond.
Now, the estranged friends are each the recipient of an invitation from the Monroes to return to the lakeside palazzo for a long-overdue memorial for Clare. Accepting the Monroes’ invitation means playing with fire, but they can hardly refuse.
Luca, Harper, Sirina, and David have barely settled into their idyllic accommodations on Lake Como before someone at the memorial party begins targeting them. Haunted by little “gifts” left in their rooms, taunting notes, and the unshakable sense of being watched, it soon becomes clear that someone on the guest list knows the whole truth about the night Clare died—and the secrets her friends have been keeping. Nothing is as it seems at the palazzo on the lake, and under their tormentor’s vengeful gaze, their secrets—and their lives—are in danger.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This slow-burn whodunit from Frick (The Split) finds college friends Harper, Luca, Sirina, and David in Lake Como, Italy, to celebrate New Year's Eve at their wealthy friend Clare Monroe's glamorous palazzo. Amid the group's midnight feasting, frolicking, and firework lighting, Clare goes missing. The next morning, she's found dead. Clare's father, powerful Hollywood venture capitalist Samuel Monroe, deems her death an accidental drowning and discourages any further investigation. Five years later, as a new art center is poised to open near Lake Como in Clare's honor, Samuel offers his daughter's surviving friends an all-expenses-paid trip back to Italy to celebrate the occasion. Though they're slightly uneasy about revisiting the past, all four accept, only to realize, shortly after they arrive, that they've launched themselves into a game of cat and mouse with a blackmailer. Each friend narrates in rotating chapters, while Frick gradually doles out details about the precise nature of Clare's death and the reasons each one of them is nursing private guilt about it. It takes a while for the plot to kick into gear, but once it does, this becomes a slickly satisfying ride. It'll put a smile on thriller fans' faces.
