PUBLISHER: William Morrow 8/2013
GENRE: Contemporary Mystery
SETTING: Illinois & Wisconsin, USA
AUTHOR SITE: link
MY GRADE: D
SYNOPSIS: Twenty-two-year-old Ruby Rousseau is haunted by memories of Tarble, the women's college she fled from ten months earlier, and the painful love affair that pushed her to the brink of tragedy.
When a suitcase belonging to a former classmate named Beth arrives on her doorstep, Ruby is plunged into a dark mystery. Beth has gone missing, and the suitcase is the only tangible evidence of her whereabouts.
Inside the bag, Ruby discovers a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the book she believes was a harbinger of her madness. Is someone trying to send her a message--and what does it mean?
The search for answers leads to Tarble. As Ruby digs into Beth's past, she has no choice but to confront her own--an odyssey that will force her to reexamine her final days at school, including the married professor who broke her heart and the ghosts of illustrious writers, dead by their own hand, who beckoned her to join their tragic circle.
But will finding the truth finally set Ruby free . . . or send her over the edge of sanity?
MY THOUGHTS: This story sounded so unique but turned out to be uninteresting and farfetched. I stared to lose interest early on shortly after the suitcase was delivered to Ruby. Most of the plot was about Ruby's past professor-turned-boyfriend Mark from a year before. She goes to a college reunion and we, the reader, get dragged through implausible situations, right until the end. I was really annoyed at all the suicide/attempted suicide attempts revolving around Mark. It's was overkill and made me roll my eyes. No way could one person, in his case Mark, attract that many unstable women.
Virginia Barnard's letter to her dead sister in the epilogue did make me smile even though the stuff involving Virginia isn't likely to ever happen. Virginia's on a quest to repeat her past in a new setting- a hospital. Sounds like a set-up for a sequel but there's not to be one.
Not a good book and I can't recommend it to anyone. The embossed cover is beautiful though!
I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.