What Have You Done?

February 1, 2024

Best seller Lapena (Everyone Here Is Lying) offers another of her addictive domestic suspense novels. This one is set tiny Fairhill, VT, where nothing much happens, and everyone knows everyone. Until one morning when the body of Diana Brewer is found in a field. Now she is a ghost who haunts the town, as everyone becomes a suspect. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2024

Lapena (Everyone Here Is Lying) delivers another top-notch twisty thriller. Teenagers Riley, Evan, and Diana are best friends, 17 years old and ready to take on the world. They just need to get through one more year in sleepy Fairhill, VT, where nothing. ever. happens. Content (for now) to hang out in the graveyard on Friday nights, drink vodka, and tell ghost stories, they even tolerate Diana's controlling boyfriend, Cameron. Only Riley knows that Diana is unhappy with the clingy Cameron, who wants them to go to the same college, and that she plans to break away from him soon. Then a local farmer discovers Diana's naked, dead body surrounded by vultures in a field one morning, changing the friends forever. Rumors and questions about Diana's death swirl in the once-peaceful town, and no one is above suspicion. VERDICT Lapena is a master of suspense, and she doesn't disappoint here. Her many fans and those who enjoy domestic suspense, small-town crimes, and twisty thrillers will flock to this one. Very highly recommended.--Cynthia Price

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 6, 2024
The murder of a teenage girl shakes up the sleepy town of Fairhill, Vt., in bestseller Lapena’s captivating latest (after Everyone Here Is Lying). After farmer Roy Ressler notices vultures circling his crops one morning, he discovers the naked corpse of 17-year-old Diana Brewer. Bright, pretty, and popular, Diana had no known enemies, leaving a glaring question at the center of the tragedy: who could possibly want Fairhill’s golden girl dead? Cycling through a laundry list of viewpoints—including multiple suspects, Diana’s family members, and the ghost of Diana herself—Lapena illustrates how the murder causes parents to cast suspicion on their children, teachers to come under fire, and decades-long relationships to fracture. Gym teacher Brad Turner fears Diana’s death will dredge up his own secrets; when construction worker Joe Prior gets called in for questioning, he worries his past might be catching up to him. What begins as a straightforward mystery gradually blooms into a portrait of a community coming apart at the seams. While the secrets-of-a-small-town themes aren’t exactly novel, Lapena’s richly drawn characters and gift for suspense give them new life. It’s gripping stuff. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency.

June 15, 2024
In Fairhill, Vermont, a community where nothing seems to happen, a violent death exposes the cruelty hiding beneath the town's supposedly placid surface. Diana Brewer's body is found in a farmer's field, and what initially seems to be a crime novel walking a well-worn path of plot points and tropes instead travels in a new direction. Lapena rolls out a story unique and timely in its telling. No one can imagine who could have killed Diana, a high school senior, and suspicion immediately turns to her possessive boyfriend, Cameron Farrell. He might have been the last person to see her alive, but the police have additional suspects. Any of them may or may not be murderers, but when their interactions with Diana are exposed, it becomes clear none of them is innocent. The throughline in this astutely observed story is that as much as young women want to take charge of their own lives, there are men who want to control and abuse them. Lapena makes sure Diana's spirit is profoundly present, first as she's looking down from above on her dead body, then as she observes her mother's grief, the interrogation of suspects, and the pain her friends suffer as a result of her death. Equally fascinating is the portrayal of the fiancee of one of the suspects, who's torn between his insistence that he's not guilty and the strong possibility that he's not the person she'd planned to marry. As much a commentary on how women's concerns and accusations are often dismissed as it is an intense crime story, Lapena's novel excavates the ways so-called responsible adults don't do enough--a crime in itself--to keep young women like Diana safe. "How many ways," Diana asks after her death, "can a girl be assaulted?" The novel's emotional heft will linger with readers. A tragic death and a slew of suspects ignite this incendiary tale.

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