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Summary
Summary
"Darkly delicious . . . Nice Girls is about the girlhood we never really leave behind, and what happens when we dare to confront our past demons. A pulsating mystery with a narrator you won't soon forget." -- Laura Dave, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of The Last Thing He Told Me
"If you're a total true crime addict, Catherine Dang's debut novel will have you hooked real fast." -- Cosmopolitan
Recommended by New York Times Book Review * Entertainment Weekly * Cosmopolitan * Los Angeles Times * Harper's Bazaar * New York Post * E! Online * Bustle * Popsugar * CrimeReads * The Nerd Daily * PureWow * Mystery & Suspense Magazine * Criminal Element * and more!
A pulse-pounding and razor-sharp debut with the emotional punch of Luckiest Girl Alive and All the Missing Girls that explores the hungry, angry, dark side of girlhood and dares to ask: Which is more dangerous for a woman--showing the world what it wants to see, or who she really is?
What did you do?
Mary used to be such a nice girl. She was the resident whiz kid of Liberty Lake, Minnesota--the quiet, chubby teen with the scholarship to an Ivy League school. But three years later, "Ivy League Mary" is back--a thinner, cynical, restless failure who was kicked out of Cornell at the beginning of her senior year and won't tell anyone why. Taking a job at the local grocery store, Mary tries to make sense of her life's sharp downward spiral.
Then beautiful, magnetic Olivia Willand goes missing. A rising social media star, Olivia is admired by everyone in Liberty Lake--except Mary. Once Olivia's best friend, Mary knows better than anyone that behind the Instagram persona hides a willful, manipulative girl with sharp edges. As the town obsesses over perfect, lovely Olivia, Mary wonders if her disappearance might be tied to another missing person: nineteen-year-old DeMaria Jackson, whose case has been widely dismissed as a runaway.
Who is the real Olivia Willand, and where did she go? What happened to DeMaria? As Mary pries at the cracks in the careful facades surrounding the two missing girls, old wounds will bleed fresh and force her to confront a horrible truth.
Maybe there are no nice girls, after all.
"Complex characters, questionable choices, and conflicted feelings about who we are and the people we leave behind combine in a compelling thriller that will have you flipping pages to discover how it all fits together."-- Darby Kane, #1 internationally bestselling author of Pretty Little Wife
"Nice Girls finds itself among the most haunting of mysteries, those that resonate with our current affairs, like Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching and Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind. Perfect for the millennial armchair detective, Nice Girls will satisfy your true crime addiction and intensify your desire for justice."-- Paperback Paris
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Jessica Knoll's Luckiest Girl Alive meets Cruel Summer in this engaging thriller. In high school, Mary seemed destined for great things. Dubbed "Ivy League Mary" for her admission to Cornell, she left her small town and all the bullies behind for a brighter future. But as a college senior, she is forced from Cornell in disgrace. With no other option, she returns to her hometown and does her best to stay under the radar. She finds a minimum wage job and connects with the townies who, unlike her, never had reason or means to leave town. Then her former friend, beautiful Instagram influencer Olivia, goes missing. What is first assumed to be a publicity stunt turns more serious when human remains are discovered. Mary becomes distracted with the details of why she had to leave Cornell, as well as the pain of bullying that led her to leave her hometown to begin with. What all these tangents have in common is the shared thread of female rage, and how it can curdle and become stifled in a world that won't allow it. Racial issues are also touched upon when the disappearance of DeMaria, a woman of color, is treated with less care by police and townfolk than the white Olivia. Mary and most characters, other than DeMaria and Mary's Vietnamese friend Madison, are assumed white. VERDICT The inclusion of high school flashbacks, along with the experiences of college-age characters, are likely to appeal to older teens who enjoy thrillers. A page-turning, multifaceted mystery with emotional depth and a thrilling conclusion.--Ann Foster, Saskatoon P.L., Sask.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Mary, the narrator of Dang's fine debut, became known as Ivy League Mary in her hometown of Liberty, Minn., after receiving a scholarship to Cornell. In her senior year, she's asked to leave the university due to an unpleasant incident involving a younger student. Ashamed, and still occasionally simmering with rage at the injustice, she returns to Liberty, where she takes a grocery store job. When her grade school friend Olivia Willand, now a rising social media star, disappears, the police and townsfolk immediately rally to locate their missing celebrity. Meanwhile, Mary discovers that 19-year-old DeMaria Jackson vanished a few months earlier. The police quickly dismissed the Black single mother as a runaway and did no follow-up investigation. Mary's convinced that the two cases are linked and sets out to prove it. The suspense builds as the uncomfortable secrets of the well-drawn and varied characters gradually emerge. Dang provides a full complement of thrills and suspense while addressing status inequities based on looks, race, and wealth. Readers will eagerly await her next. Agent: Eve Attermann, WME. (Sept.)
Booklist Review
Dang's debut thriller follows Mary, who has just been expelled from Cornell University a semester shy of graduating after a violent fight with another student. Mary is forced to return to her small Midwestern hometown of Liberty Lake and face her father's disappointment and the gossip about "Ivy League Mary's" fall from grace. She unhappily takes a job at the local grocery store and reconnects with handsome former high school football star, Dwayne, who is also dealing with dashed aspirations. Mary's curiosity is piqued by the disappearance of her former friend Olivia, whose fate she believes could be interlinked with that of another missing girl, LaMaria, whose body parts have just been discovered in the lake. Dang crafts a compelling mystery, exploring the toll societal and familial pressures take on women, as well as the disparity in responses to the disappearances of white and Black women. Mary isn't always a sympathetic narrator, her often careless actions take a serious toll on the people of color in her life, adding to the edginess as readers are gripped by the story's provocative twists and turns.