Tell Us No Secrets

April 11, 2022
Set during the 1969–1970 academic year at the Stonybridge School for Girls in the Berkshires, Sterling’s solid debut follows four 17-year-old girls through their senior year. Class president and jock Abby Madison used to be best friends with delicate star pupil Karen Mullens, but replaces Karen with the beautiful albeit unscholarly Cassidy Thomas as her new best friend. Devastated, Karen forms a close friendship with mature nonconformist Zoey Spalding, who was previously best friends with Cassidy. Fed up with her time at Stonybridge, Zoey proposes an “entertaining” idea to Karen: putting a star next to each student on the senior class list who loses her virginity. What starts out as fun turns into a domino effect of exposed secrets and rising tensions among the girls. Near the end of the school year, one of the four is murdered, with no suspect found. Scattered throughout are chapters that take place in 2018, narrated by an anonymous Stonybridge alumna who knows the truth about the murder. The result is a slow-burn psychological thriller filled with well-developed characters that builds to a satisfying, if unsettling, conclusion. Sterling is a writer to watch. Agent: Cindy Blake, Viney Agency.

Starred review from June 1, 2022
Set in 1970 at a girls' boarding school in Lenox, Massachusetts, Sterling's novel is both a gripping psychological thriller and a not-so-nostalgic look back at a time of massive social upheaval. Zoey, Abby, Cassidy, and Karen are about to graduate from Stoneybridge School. Sent to Stoneybridge after her mother died, Cassidy is the gorgeous one--not clever but so pretty she gets by with things other girls don't. Zoey is the attention-seeker, a rebel whose mother dislikes her and whose film-director dad ignores her. Karen is the smart one, though, being overweight, she's a disappointment to her mother, who thinks looks are everything. Abby is the ""normal"" one, who is from a wealthy, loving family. The girls are now seniors, and it's Zoey's idea to create The List, on which the girls add their names when they've lost their virginity and rate their first sexual experience. That's when the trouble starts. Raging hormones, jealousy, lies, changing loyalties, vindictiveness, and ignorance of how their actions will impact themselves and others all play parts in a suspenseful story involving a suicide, a murder, and a devastating cover-up that has repercussions decades later. Both evocative and provocative, Sterling's blend of thriller and coming-of-age tale is deeply affecting and full of unexpected twists.

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