TWISTED FATE

In this bracing tale of modern teenhood, the lives of estranged sisters Ally and Syd become re-entwined through an obsession with a mercurial boy. With photonegative personalities, the sisters fill opposite dark and light spaces. Ally, the compliant, helpful, muffin-baking sister, is flattered by the attention the new neighbor, Graham, is paying her. On the other hand, Syd, the pot-smoking, rebellious, brainiac, is both fascinated and repelled by Graham’s strangeness and tousled good looks. Syd guesses immediately that the glaze in his eyes comes from drug use. Plagued by his past, Graham sees the sisters as a fresh start in what he believes to be his genius filmmaking career. Syd becomes suspicious when a little boy in the town goes missing, and her terror mounts as Ally’s relationship with Graham becomes increasingly intimate. In short chapters that switch point of view, each character describes events in disconcertingly different ways; the story is compelling in its shifting focus. It’s a riveting scrutiny of a youth culture raised on a regimen of prescription drugs such as Ritalin and compelled to record and share every moment. The ending blindsides readers, shedding a clarifying backward spotlight on the plot and leaving a haunting afterimage.

A goose-bump–raising psychological thriller that will engross even the most jaded mystery enthusiast.