About the Book:
Six friends.
One college reunion.
One unsolved murder.
Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has been invited back to her university for a reunion and she is obsessed with dazzling everyone with her beauty and success. This time when they see her, it has to be perfect because she is perfect. Not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather Shelby’s murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she’d been closest to since freshman year.
But there’s more at stake than the delicious envy of her peers—not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone can let Heather’s murder go unsolved. In fact, someone has orchestrated the whole weekend to trap the real killer. As the weekend unfolds and they get closer to the truth, the group finds there was more than murder hidden amongst them on campus.
Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is an addictive, propulsive millennial thriller you won’t be able to put down.
My Review:
“One of you is a monster, hiding behind a mask.”
What a fast-paced, riveting book! I had this one on my Kindle since release day and after reading tons of great reviews, I decided to dive in. This book absolutely lives up to all the hype! I rarely come across commercial fiction that reminds me of Penelope Douglas but this one does. I am also very surprised to learn that this is the author’s debut novel.
A group of friends reunite at their 10 year college reunion, where the main protagonist and narrator Jessica Miller is determined to show off how far she’s come since graduation. Once part of a popular group called the East House Seven, Jessica never felt completely at ease with her friends. She always felt like the outsider and outlier, with family secrets and insecurities that constantly undermined her self-confidence and sense of self. She attended the expensive private college Duquette just to try and please her family and always felt out of place.
“And I think I knew, even then, that it would never get better than this. I think some part of me could sense—even here in our triumph, in our wild, perfect beginning—the small seeds of our destruction.”
Everyone’s old rivalries and secrets come to a head at the reunion. A member of their clique, Heather, was brutally murdered in college and the killer was never caught. Was her killer one of them? It was difficult to tell whether it might have been the wealthy and privileged Mint, Jessica’s old boyfriend, Coop, Caro, Frankie, or one of the others. Or even Jessica herself!
“I understand,” he said slowly, drawing the words out, “that you’d do anything to win. You’re kind of a sociopath.”
I froze. “That is the single worst thing anyone has ever said to me.”
The story alternates timelines between college and present-day. As the book rockets towards it shocking conclusion, each of the former friends learn new things about each other and themselves. Did one of them have a motive to kill Heather? Or was it a stranger who entered her dorm room that terrible night?
Overall this book was an entertaining and enthralling thriller, with a dark undercurrent that I loved. Highly recommend!
“It’ll be okay, I whispered to myself. You’ll tell the truth. Just not all of it.”
