October 8, 2018
In the prologue of this crafty conundrum from bestseller Jewell (Then She Was Gone), a dead body lies on the kitchen floor of the Fitzwilliam family’s Victorian house in a posh neighborhood of Bristol, England. The author smoothly juggles multiple story lines—some dating back 20 years—centering on paterfamilias Tom Fitzwilliam. For some reason, the now middle-aged, nationally honored schoolmaster seems to effortlessly bewitch women and girls alike, among them his slavishly solicitous wife, Nicola; increasingly paranoid stalker Frances Tripp, the mother of one of his students, 15-year-old Jenna; and Jenna’s best friend, Bess Ridley, who has a schoolgirl crush on him. While all the people watching Tom facilitate the serpentine plot, they’re also the novel’s weakest link, since their respective obsessions remains baffling and at times border on the tedious. That said, prepare to be blindsided by the murder victim’s identity, not revealed until late in the game—and an even more stunning final surprise. Jewell does a masterly job of maintaining suspense. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary.

November 1, 2018
A young newlywed's life is upended, and a picturesque neighborhood is shattered, when she is suspected of a savage murder.At the beginning of a new year, Joey Mullen moves back to England from Ibiza with Alfie, her husband, whom she hastily married out of grief over the death of her mother. Jack, Joey's older brother, invites the young couple to move into his painted Victorian house in the upscale Bristol neighborhood of Melville Heights so they can get on their feet financially and help with the baby that Jack and his wife, Rebecca, are expecting. Joey quickly becomes infatuated with their neighbor Tom Fitzwilliam, a new headmaster charged with improving the local school. Her crush only intensifies when Alfie suggests having a baby, and Joey begins to suspect her marriage was a mistake. Meanwhile, Tom's wife, Nicola, struggles to fill her days and remains oblivious to their son, Freddie, who regularly spies on his neighbors and the village's teenage schoolgirls, taking their photos and keeping a detailed log of everyone's activities. This surveillance exacerbates the paranoia and mental illness of another neighbor, the mother of 16-year-old Jenna, one of Tom's students. Jenna's mother is convinced that she knows the Fitzwilliam family from a vacation incident years earlier (and that the family is now stalking her), but Jenna is more concerned that Tom may be having an inappropriate relationship with her best friend. After several months, tension in the neighborhood explodes, and Joey is suspected of a brutal murder. However, as the police gather evidence, it becomes clear how many secrets each family has been hiding. Jewell (Then She Was Gone, 2017, etc.) adeptly weaves together a complex array of characters in her latest thriller. The novel opens with the murder investigation and deftly maintains its intensity and brisk pace even as the story moves through different moments in time over the previous three months. Jewell's use of third-person narration allows her to explore each family's anxieties and sorrows, which ultimately makes this novel's ending all the more unsettling.An engrossing and haunting psychological thriller.

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Starred review from November 1, 2018
Jewell follows her New York Times best-seller Then She Was Gone (2018) with another stellar domestic drama, this one set in an affluent neighborhood in Bristol, England. She has created a cast of well-defined characters whose lives are already intertwined at the start, even though they don't know it yet. Everyone has some sort of secret, and everyone is spying on each other, tracking each other, and orchestrating encounters with each other in a brilliantly plotted progression that has a charismatic schoolmaster at the center. Tom Fitzwilliam's neighbor is consumed by her infatuation with him. One of his students is also smitten, although her BFF doesn't trust him. His son, Freddie, in the throes of teenage angst, is confused by the mercurial relationship between his parents. Twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl chronicled her obsession with a handsome young teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam in her diary, and when the revelation of her suicide is stirred into an already bubbling cauldron of resentment and suspicion, it boils over and results in a brutal murder with an intriguing assortment of suspects. Expert misdirection keeps the reader guessing, and the rug-pulled-out-from-beneath-your-feet conclusion?coupled with one final, bone-chilling revelation?is stunning. Best not to bet on anyone. A compulsive read guaranteed to please fans of A. J. Finn and Ruth Ware.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 15, 2018

Private eyes are watching you. Jewell's latest (Then She Was Gone; I Found You) begins at a crime scene where a woman has been murdered. The novel then alternates between the past leading up to the killing and the ongoing police investigation. There are people with multiple perspectives in this Bristol neighborhood. Melville Heights is a community where people interact with, observe, and judge one another. There's the newly married and bored Joey Mullen, who with her husband has moved in with her brother and his pregnant wife. Joey becomes infatuated with the local school's new headmaster, Tom Fitzwilliam, who is married with a teenage son, Freddie. Joey is not the only one; almost all his students are in awe of him, but not Jenna, who suspects something between Tom and her best friend, Bess. Neither is Freddie, who doesn't understand why everyone, including his mom, dotes on his father. Now a woman is dead and Joey is the prime suspect. But did she do it? VERDICT Jewell weaves a taut multiperspective, domestic/community suspense story that is sure to please fans of Ruth Ware and A.J. Finn. [See Prepub Alert, 8/27/18.]--Susan Moritz, Silver Spring, MD

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