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What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan

Thriller

What She Knew

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Gilly Macmillan, on your first book!

by Gilly Macmillan

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Quick take

Macmillan keeps the tension building—this is an up-til-3-am kind of read—without skimping on substance or character development.

Why I love it

Thrillers aren't my go-to genre, but there's a certain kind of crime drama—British, psychologically nuanced, helmed by a damaged, sexy P.I.—that never fails to put me in its thrall. Think Kate Atkinson's Case Histories or ITV's Broadchurch (and if you haven't had the pleasure in either case, fix that now). I wasn't expecting this debut to meet my standards, but boy does What She Knew deliver.

The event that sets the story in motion is enough to still any parent's heart: on a walk in the woods near Bristol with his divorced mom, Rachel, 8-year-old Ben Finch begs to run ahead to their favorite rope swing. Rachel nervously agrees because "in the absence of Ben's dad I thought it was my responsibility to…encourage Ben to be independent, to take risks, to discover life." The empty, still-swaying swing she sees when she arrives tells her she made the wrong call.

In the nightmare days that follow, DI James Clemo (sexy, damaged) battles the clock to find Ben. As the odds that Ben has survived diminish, Rachel finds herself questioning not just her own judgment, but everything and everyone. Is her "mother-of-the-year" sister Nicky uncomplicatedly devoted—or hiding devastating secrets? Could her best friend Laura be feeding information to the ravenous press? Is maternal instinct her best friend, or will it invariably lead her astray? Detective Clemo seems devastated by the case on a deeply personal level. But why?

As Rachel's version of events alternates with Detective Clemo's, Gilly Macmillan keeps the tension building—this is an up-til-3-am kind of read—without stinting on substance or character development. Like any violent disruption, Ben's disappearance strips away pretenses and crumbles the facades of those affected. "Are any of our… relationships really based on secure foundations?" Rachel wonders. By the end of this gripping, insightful novel, you'll be wondering that yourself.

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Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless