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Published Oct 2017
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
The line between best friend and something more is a line always crossed in the dark.
Jess Wong is Angie Redmond's best friend. And that's the most important thing, even if Angie can't see how Jess truly feels. Being the girl no one quite notices is OK with Jess anyway. If nobody notices her, she's free to watch everyone else. But when Angie begins to fall for Margot Adams, a girl from the nearby boarding school, Jess can see it coming a mile away. Suddenly her powers of observation are more a curse than a gift.
As Angie drags Jess further into Margot's circle, Jess discovers more than her friend's growing crush. Secrets and cruelty lie just beneath the carefree surface of this world of wealth and privilege, and when they come out, Jess knows Angie won't be able to handle the consequences.
When the inevitable darkness finally descends, Angie will need her best friend.
"It doesn't even matter that she probably doesn't understand how much she means to me. It's purer this way. She can take whatever she wants from me, whenever she wants it, because I'm her best friend."
A Line in the Dark is a story of love, loyalty, and murder.
"Starred Review. Mesmerizing." - Kirkus
"Lo pivots halfway in, finishing the story through a mix of transcript of police interviews and third-person chapters, deepening the mystery, shifting potential guilt among multiple possible culprits, and keeping readers guessing until the final pages." - Publishers Weekly
"The bulk of the story is told brilliantly from Jess' tightly observed perspective, her observations colored by intense jealousy and desire, the truth of which is doled out in subtle moments and expressive language. Grade 9-12." - Booklist
"Dark, twisty, and unsettling, this book almost begs to be read in one sitting, and then instantly reread...A high-interest thriller with wide appeal recommended for all collections." - School Library Journal
"A twisty, dark psychological thriller that will leave you guessing til the very end." - Teen Vogue
"Malinda Lo's A Line in the Dark is soaked in menace. Each page in this brilliant thriller is deliciously unsettling - like Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars." - Kiersten White, New York Times bestselling author of And I Darken and Now I Rise.
"A beautifully written and compellingly well-observed psychological thriller." - Kate Elliott, New York Times bestselling author of Court of Fives and Cold Magic
"As soon as I finished, I had to read it again." - Justine Larbalestier, author of My Sister Rosa and Liar
This information about A Line in the Dark was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Sharona Jacobs
Malinda Lo is the critically acclaimed author of several young adult novels, including most recently A Line in the Dark, which was a Kirkus Best YA Book of 2017 and one of Vulture's 10 Best YA Books of 2017. Her novel Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and was a Kirkus Best Book for Children and Teens. She has been a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda's nonfiction has been published by the New York Times Book Review, NPR, the Huffington Post, The Toast, the Horn Book, and the anthologies Here We Are, How I Resist, and Scratch. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife.
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