THE SHAM

In the wake of a tragedy, a young woman tries to restart her life, but her new roommate has sinister plans to destroy her in Barrell’s thriller.

When Maggie Nevins’ parents died—they were both murdered in their home by a neighbor—she inherited their unsellable house and their “horrific debt.” She decides that she desperately needs to start her life afresh, so she changes her name to Margo Sharpe and moves from Cape Cod to South Boston, where she buys a small, dilapidated house; she can only afford it because it went into foreclosure. Margo takes on a roommate she doesn’t know, Lucy Somers, to make ends meet, and the stranger quickly reveals herself to be a very strange woman—shockingly messy and personally intrusive, and frequently asking Margo inappropriately personal questions. As time goes by, Lucy’s behavior grows odder: She snoops in Margo’s room, throws out Margo’s mail, and may have even planted dead rats in the home. She also goes on a date with Margo’s ex-boyfriend, Brad Ellis—whose father killed Margo’s parents—and tries to sabotage Margo by sending troubling messages (“I am hoping to talk to you about a corporate card. As you know, you don’t pay me a lot”) to her tech-firm boss, Corinne. Barrell captures Lucy’s creepy behavior with dramatic power throughout this complex tale, which unfolds slowly; one can’t help but admire the author’s literary restraint. Indeed, the more the reader learns about Lucy, the more Margo’s own mental health is thrown into question. This is a tense psychological thriller that’s brimming with suspense, and it’s intelligently composed and paced. However, the plot finally becomes convoluted, and the labyrinthine connections between Margo, Lucy, and Brad become hard to disentangle and accept. This flaw, though, doesn’t sink the novel, which remains a riveting tale; Margo, in particular, is a compelling character whose apparent levelheadedness masks a deeper, profound disturbance in her soul.

A slightly uneven but effectively unsettling novel.