Dark Rooms: A Novel

by Lili Anolik Narrated by Eileen Stevens

Overview

The Secret History meets Sharp Objects in this stunning debut about murder and glamour set in the ambiguous and claustrophobic world of an exclusive New England prep school.

Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly-a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession-but memory and instinct won't allow Nica's older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed.

Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.

Compulsively readable, Lili Anolik's debut novel combines the verbal dexterity of Marisha Pessl's Special Topic in Calamity Physics and the haunting atmospherics and hairpin plot twists of Megan Abbott's Dare Me.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/26/2015
The bullet that snuffs out the life of 16-year-old wild child Nica Baker hits her family like a hollow-point, especially psychologically enmeshed big sister Grace, in this suspenseful, sad, and shattering first novel from Vanity Fair contributing editor Anolik. Only a year older, and the yang to Nica’s yin, good girl Grace had been relying on her sister’s charisma and cool to smooth Grace’s way through the emotional minefields of Chandler Academy, the precious Hartford, Conn., private school where their parents both teach. In fact, Grace just can’t let Nica go, repeatedly seeing, hearing, and talking with her during the grief-swamped, drug-muddled months that follow. When a fellow student’s suicide-confession officially closes the case, Grace doesn’t buy it. Deferring her enrollment at Williams, she sifts through the wreckage of their lives, ostensibly to figure out who really killed Nica, but, even more crucially, to find herself. As she starts to penetrate the myriad lies and secrets, the picture that emerges is far from pretty, with a lengthy list of suspects. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Anolik’s debut will haunt you. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM. (Mar.)

Elle

A Twin Peaks-twisted murder mystery.

Gregg Hurwitz

One hell of a first novel. Dark Rooms is an elegant work of crime fiction with a plot as well-drawn as the characters who inhabit it. It’s a fine murder mystery as well as an exploration of loss and identity...Think Megan Abbott meets Twin Peaks.

Michael Connelly

Great story, great twists, great insights — a brilliant start to a novelist’s career.

John Searles

Fascinating, disturbing, mysterious, and at times, downright creepy—Lili Anolik’s wonderfully twisted debut novel will intoxicate readers!

Library Journal

★ 02/15/2015
Gregarious, fun-loving, and athletic Nica, the younger of two sisters, is murdered near their home on the grounds of a New England private school. The crime is quickly solved, but Grace, who has always lived in Nica's shadow, is not satisfied with the police's findings and grows obsessed with catching the true killer. However, the story line just scratches the surface of this insightful, complex novel, which is all about angst: broken relationships, class and social issues, the human psyche. The author skillfully develops Grace as a complicated character, using her perspective to get readers to empathize with her reactions to events around her. The other adolescent characters are equally well drawn. Anolik excels in capturing the nonplussed attitudes of teenagers not fully aware of the ramifications of their actions. VERDICT Despite an ambiguous ending that left this crime fiction fan somewhat dissatisfied, Anolik's haunting debut is tough to put down and will stay with you for a long time. The author's characters and tone recall Donna Tartt's The Secret History or Kimberly Pauley's Ask Me. [See Preub Alert, 9/15/14.]—Frances Thorsen, Chronicles of Crime Bookshop, Victoria, BC

Kirkus Reviews

2015-01-07
A young woman becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind her sister's death in Anolik's thrilling debut.The idyll of a posh Connecticut boarding school is shattered when 16-year-old Nica Baker—gorgeous, wild and effortlessly cool—is found murdered in the graveyard behind her parents' house. When another student commits suicide, leaving behind a guilty note and an apology, the police consider the case solved: It was unrequited love gone wrong, the tragedy of the loner boy who killed the beautiful faculty-brat girl who didn't reciprocate his feelings. For Nica's older sister Grace, though, something doesn't quite sit right. Too grief-stricken and drugged to start her freshman year at Williams, Grace is shaken from her haze when she stumbles on some information that calls the official story into question. And so Grace—Grace, who's always been in Nica's shadow, Grace, who's always been high-achieving and risk-averse—finds herself consumed with a murder investigation of her own. What had Nica been doing in the weeks before she died, and more importantly, with whom? Why did she break up with her longtime boyfriend without explanation? Where did the tiny tattoo in her armpit come from? Slowly, Grace begins to untangle a web of secrets and betrayals deeper than she could have possibly imagined. In the process, she begins to find her own identity, an identity that is—for the first time—separate from her sister's. As much as this is a crime drama, it's also a coming-of-age novel. The plot is high-suspense, but it's the strength of the characters—and the strength of Anolik's hypnotic, unfussy prose—that gives the book its lasting force. Wholly absorbing and emotionally rich, this novel dodges Law & Order: Special Victims Unit clichés to deliver something deeply satisfying.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173716163
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos