Winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award
In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier, Shari Lapena, and Michelle Richmond comes a new thriller from the bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages—a twisty, harrowing story set at a prestigious prep school in which one woman’s carefully hidden past might destroy her future.
Tess has worked hard to keep her past buried, where it belongs. Now she’s … future.
Tess has worked hard to keep her past buried, where it belongs. Now she’s the wife to a respected professor at an elite boarding school, where she also teaches. Her seventeen-year-old son, Rudy, whose dark moods and complicated behavior she’s long worried about, seems to be thriving: he has a lead role in the school play and a smart and ambitious girlfriend. Tess tries not to think about the mistakes she made eighteen years ago, and mostly, she succeeds.
And then one more morning she gets a text at 2:50 AM: it’s Rudy, asking for help. When Tess picks him up she finds him drenched and shivering, with a dark stain on his sweatshirt. Four hours later, Tess gets a phone call from the Haywood school headmistress: Lila Zeller, Rudy’s girlfriend, has been found dead on the beach, not far from where Tess found Rudy just hours before.
As the investigation into Lila’s death escalates, Tess finds her family attacked on all sides. What first seemed like a tragic accidental death is turning into something far more sinister, and not only is Tess’s son a suspect but her husband is a person of interest too. But Lila’s death isn’t the first blemish on Haywood’s record, and the more Tess learns about Haywood’s fabled history, the more she realizes that not all skeletons will stay safely locked in the closet.
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Carol Goodman is a superb writer, and she explores family and small-town dynamics in a way that’s both suspenseful and touchingly real. THE SEA OF LOST GIRLS features a fascinating cast of characters, intriguing setting — and enough shocking twists to leave you breathless. I loved it.
Exciting-I liked it!
This was a decent book but it really seemed as if the author was trying too hard to throw everyone off track when in reality I had the killer pegged from the first chapter. It’s rare that an author succeeds in leading the reader down a lot of plot twists and this one definitely didn’t manage to throw me off the scent. But still a good enough story.
Wow! This author knows her characters and how to make a reader guessing just who is responsible for a lost girl in a boarding school where she teaches. Plenty of secrets here and an unexpected ending. Now I want to read more of her books, and visit Maine where the story takes place.
It was one of those unputdownable books that kept me reading late into the night, two nights in a row. Even I, an inveterate mystery reader/writer, did not figure out the “whodunit” until it was revealed. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys psychological suspense.
Loved! Really held my attention and was constantly suspicious of almost everyone. Timely theme. Great author!
This is a beautifully written and gripping novel.
I’d eagerly anticipated reading this, as I am a fan of Carol Goodman’s novels. I wasn’t quite sure at first: I found the narrator overly cloying in her attitude towards her son, but as the story unfolded, the reason became clear. The pace of the novel becomes increasingly fast-moving and a couple of twists add to the suspense and surprise. The setting is evocative and atmospheric, and more than a hint of myth is woven into the narrative. I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending, but this didn’t really detract from the book overall.
Favorite Quotes:
I could feel the waves of emotion radiating off her like blast waves from an explosion.
It’s called a tuck box, my mother had told me, it’s what all the kids take to boarding school. As if I were going to Hogwarts and not being sent away in shame.
It’s the quickest, lightest touch of the lips on mine, but it shifts something in me, like the moon pulling an internal tide.
My Review:
Goodreads lists twenty-four novels after this talented wordsmith’s name, and shame on me, this is the first one I have chanced to pick up. It was fantastic! The premise and writing style were gripping, unfailingly intriguing, super twisty. The compelling storylines hosted a bevy of unlikable yet curiously enticing and prickly characters that kept my curiosity lashed to a well-honed edge and made me itch, as they were either close to or well over the edge of being… icky, but that was not always readily apparent. I cringed, flinched, chewed my cuticles and wanted to hiss at any interruption that dared to disrupt my perusal. Sigh, Ms. Goodman has a rabid fangirl on her hands. More, please!
So many red herrings we must be swimming in The Sea of Lost Girls.
This fantastic book addresses entitlement breeding misbehavior, allowance, and acceptance, making it favorable. At Haywood Academy, generations of young women and girls have been upsetting the norm, causing shifts and fits, leaving them to meet or disappear from the local, and haunting Maiden Stone.
‘We make our allegories by choosing what part of the story to remember.’
Haywood Academy and Tess Levine have a troubled past and a challenging future. She’s been stitching together tall tales for over two decades, and they are unraveling about her with a fury matched only by her maelstrom of a son Rudy who feels betrayed by all she has keenly kept from him, or attributed to him. Those ever-growing stories taking on monstrous proportions, now tangled with the murder of a local student.
The Sea of Lost Girls is a fabulous dive into the mythos of small-town lore. I loved how Carol Goodman wove classic literature, local legend, social media, gossip, mystery, and psychology to bring this thriller to life. My husband and I read this aloud to one another, and my man is good at seeing outcomes and guessed one particular reveal that made me snack on tacks! Authors, men can see ploys seventeen chapters away.
I love this book because it gives another voice to movements like ‘Me Too.’ Carol Goodman pulls us into a Women’s Studies aspect of the past, looking at how, as women, society has set us aside, and hidden for being ‘seduced’ by weak men. Or abused for being strong women–and all the other poor excuses used to program men to think that having power means ‘over-powering’ a female and in this case, leaving a Sea of Lost Girls on and around the grounds of the Haywood Academy.
With thanks to TLC Book Tours, I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary advance copy of this book.
This is the first book I’ve read by Carol Goodman but it certainly will not be the last. I was captivated from the first page and completely engaged all the way through.
I love a good atmospheric novel and this one has it in spades. Set on the Maine coastland, it just amped up the tension and I found it to be effective here. On top of that, the boarding school with it’s legends and ghost stories that have been passed down through the generations just gave the story an extra layer of intrigue that kept me glued to the pages.
There is nothing I love more than misdirection in a mystery, and I felt that I was constantly second guessing myself here. I felt sure I knew who the killer was right from the start, but could it be that easy? And then the deeper we got into the story, I knew for sure I had the right suspect, only to be misled once again. I love a book that keeps me on my toes, making me really think about the clues I am given and this one sure did keep my mind busy, for sure!
This book is full of secrets, and as we all know, secrets have a way of coming out at some point. I loved that it was all told from Tess’s point of view – it’s a nice change from the many books that have multiple narrators. It goes back and forth in time from the present to the past, where we learn some integral bits of information that have some impact on what is going on in the present.
I read the majority of this book in one sitting, as once I really got into the book, I had a hard time putting it down. It’s the type of book that gets under your skin as you become desperate to find out what is really going on. I love books like that and I definitely plan on seeing if Carol Goodman’s other books are just as addicting!
Lies, secrets, and cover-ups abound in THE SEA OF LOST GIRLS.
Tess would do anything for her son, Rudy….even lie FOR him and lie TO him.
Rudy has always been a problem, and Tess always defended her son even though her husband, Harmon, complained about it.
Tess and Harmon taught at the school Rudy was attending and lived ten minutes off campus. Both Tess and Harmon have things to hide, but what are they? Do they have anything to do with the death of Lila?
After Lila was found dead, Tess has to re-live her previous life that has been kept a secret until now. Harmon’s secrets remain a secret.
We follow the investigation, learn of Tess’s life after she left Haywood School and after the birth of her son, and has us pondering how it all fits together to find who was responsible for Lila’s death.
Who really is the killer?
There are quite a few characters who could be guilty and quite a few unlikable characters.
Are you a good enough detective to figure it out?
Ms. Goodman definitely knows how to keep up the suspense and feed the reader’s curiosity. 4/5
This book was given to me by the publisher and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
The first, but certainly not the last of this author’s books I’ve read. I received an ARC to review. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was suspenseful, twisted, and had a totally unexpected ending. If you like mysteries and suspense, don’t pass up this one.