Only If You're Lucky

Margot is the shy, careful one, a first-year student at a liberal arts college in South Carolina who spends her freshman year studying and keeping out of trouble. Then Lucy Sharpe, magnetic and reckless, picks her out and asks her to be roommates. Margot says yes, though she cannot quite say why: daring, hunger and envy all play a part.

The two move into an off-campus house with two other women. Sloane is the sarcastic one, Nicole the nice one, and Lucy runs the household. The four are opposites, yet tightly bound to one another.

Living with them draws Margot out of the shell she has stayed in since her best friend Eliza died three weeks after high school graduation. She and Lucy grow very close. Halfway through sophomore year, a fraternity boy from the house next door is murdered, and Lucy disappears without a trace.

The book is a psychological mystery told around a friendship, with Margot as the central figure. It opens on the pull of an intense bond and then turns to violence and a missing friend. Expect a campus setting, an atmosphere of unease, and a question about how well Margot ever knew the person she trusted most.