ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS

While on a book tour, a bestselling author begins to realize the steep price of fame and fortune.

Three years after publicly quitting her job under the hashtag #MomsWithDreams, Tessa Calloway has not only spent more time with her young children, she’s also written a bestselling novel about the strong and feisty character Annabelle Brown. But weeks into a national tour, she’s starting to question the balance of what she’s lost against what she’s gained; every day brings a new flight, a new hotel, a new event, and then barely time to FaceTime her husband, Henry, and kids, Linny and Zack, before tumbling into bed and waking at dawn to do it all again. The crowds are flattering, but she’s sliding into overwhelmed. You can’t keep a good storyteller down, though, so when Tessa discovers a delicate locket holding a family picture inside a hotel nightstand, she uses her social media clout to see if she can find “Locket Mom.” Despite the immediate interest of her fans, no news arises, and then Tessa begins to notice odd little incidents that, taken together, seem to point to something possibly more sinister. For one, she keeps getting questions at her events about where she grew up, which is a closely guarded secret because of a “bad thing” in her past. Has someone found out the truth? And if so, how far will they go to tear her down? Tessa is a well-developed and likable character, but there’s something a bit off about the rhythm of the novel. It takes a long time to establish a true sense of threat and how it relates to Tessa’s shadowy past, and Tessa’s guilt and paranoia begin to feel wearying, rather than sympathetic. But once the blackmail plot gets going, the pace picks up and the story unspools smoothly. The novel begins by interrogating the “have it all” myth, but twists its way into a thriller by the end.

An uneven pace is elevated by a charismatic and complex main character.