BEST BOY

In Royce’s thriller, a woman’s buried trauma and secrets resurface after she receives a letter from a stranger.

The novel opens on the Halloween of 1998 following a house party. Sixteen-year-old Ingrid Lind seeks medical treatment after a brutal sexual assault leaves her with several injuries, including a broken nose, leading to a procedure that becomes her entry point into cosmetic surgery and an eventual complete reinvention (“a key that would unlock a series of useful doors”). Fast forward to 2018: The 36-year-old Ingrid, now called Viveca Stephenson, is a former LA actress living a life of affluence in the Connecticut suburb of Greenwich with her successful husband, Henry, and young son, Theo. The timeline alternates between her childhood years in rural Michigan and the present while tracing the events that occurred in-between as she constructed a new identity after her life-altering trauma. Across these timelines, Ingrid’s flashbacks contain fragments of memories that cast her life into question and expose the fragility of her secret identity—including those of the seemingly picture-perfect family she felt adopted into, the fractures within her own family unit, and her journey to a new life protected by a new voice, face, name, and life story. Severe chronic migraines still plague her (“Sometimes—not always—Ingrid would pass out and be left with blanks. Windows of time in which she’d suffered excruciating pain that she simply could not recall”), but it appears that she is finally in the clear in her new life. Even the “tainted” memories of that fateful Halloween have receded into the background, replaced by happy recollections of her son’s birthday. Then, a terrifying home invasion is followed by a letter from a man who knows her and her secret. She doesn’t know who he is. Are the events interconnected? The mystery quickly sends the narrative into psychological-thriller territory.

The contrast between the protagonist’s inner and outer lives is absolutely compelling, and the flashbacks offer multiple layers, creating a mystery within the mystery. The story’s red herrings are well thought out and fresh, and the elements demonstrating how Viveca’s past shapes her present become enticing, plot-driven easter eggs of their own. The story will please fans of authors like Liane Moriarty and Ruth Ware, but the execution doesn’t quite match the intriguing premise. The prose reads as awkward at times, with the word “remembered” making an appearance five times on a single page during a flashback. (Long sequences of flashbacks require immediacy, and the author’s passive language can create awkward clumps.) At one point, the word you jarringly closes the distance between the third-person narrator and the reader (“All you had to do was look around you”), disrupting the flow of the chapter’s exposition. These problems are exacerbated by a larger sentence-by-sentence issue—the story is weighed down by flattened descriptions (“It had a sealed-off feeling”) and filler dialogue that seems meant to mirror real-life speech but only dilutes the narrative’s tension and rhythm. These missteps hamper an otherwise engaging, atmospherically rich mystery.

This thriller has all the right elements but needs tightening.